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AUTHOR: 


WHITE,  F.  A. 


TITLE: 


COMPLETE  LIFE  OF 
HOMER 

PLA  CE: 

LONDON 

DATE: 

1889 


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83HB 


V/liite,  F  A 

Tlie  con^^lete  life  of  Homer. 
1889. 

viii,  496  p« 


London,  Bell, 


^  I 


lo  Homerus,  ■■  Biographyi 

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/ 


THE 


( 


COMPLETE  LIFE  OF  HOMER, 


I 


/ 

i 


BV 


F.    A.    WHITE,    B.A. 


"  A  beggar  blind,  an  exile  lone, 
None  gave  the  bard  relief; 
He  sang  for  bread,  and  ^ot  a  stone, 
When  he  was  dead  of  gnef  ; 
An  outcast's  womb,  a  beg^ar'i,  tomb, 
His  life  began  and  closed  in  gloom." 

(One  legend  tells  us  he  fell  blind  through  weepitig.) 

Diiap/K>inted  Aspirations^  1865, 


,<i 


LONDON : 

GEORGE   BELL  .!i:   SONS, 
4.  YORK  STREET,  COVENT  GARDEN 

i88q. 


/l 


if  f-i^ure 


1,0  St 


PREFACE. 


,< 


■;o:- 


The  curious  reader  will  here  see,  for  the 
first  time,  2,842  years  after  his  death, — 
veluti  descinpta  tabclla  vita  senis, — the 
complete  Life  of  Lives,  the  complete  Life  of 
the  first  of  poets,  containing  his  place  and 
date  of  birth,  his  parentage,  his  ancestry 
for  ten  generations,  the  various  incidents 
of  his  boyhood  and  early  manhood,  his 
exile,  his  voyages,  travels,  and  adventures 
by  sea  and  land,  till  his  arrival  at  Chios, 
lis  twenty  years'  stay  there,  full  particulars 
^f  his  last  journey,  sickness,  and  death  at 
I  OS,  and  the  inscription  on  his  tombstone 
as  it  was  originally  written,  with  copious 
dates.  Also  an  elaborate  critical  discus- 
sion of  his  works,  whether  surviving,  lost, 


IV 


Preface. 


Preface. 


or   only     contemplated,    a   vindication   of 
Hermogenes,    the  editor  of  the  so-called 
pseudo- Herodotus,   a    full  account   of  the 
Younger  (so  habitually  confounded    with 
the  Elder)  Homer,  and  a  complete  proof, 
not  only  that  Homer  wrote,  but  also  of  the 
primeval  antiquity  of  writing.     I  am  told 
that  a  complete  Life  of  Homer  is  a  species 
of  anachronism  that  has  no  chance  of  suc- 
cess at  this  time  of  day.     But  surely,  with 
such  a  multitude  of  editions  in  the  original 
Greek,  and  such  a  multitude  of  translations 
into  every  European  language,  from  An- 
dronicus  to  Morris,  there  niiist  be  many 
students  that  would  like  to  see  all  that  can 
be  certainly  known  or  probably  conjectured 
about  the  first  and  greatest  of  uninspired 
writers.     That  2,842  years  after  his  death 
not  only  no  complete   Life   of  the    Poet 
should  be  in  existence,  but  no  Life  in  our 
language  should  be  even  worth  reading,  is 
strange  indeed. 


1 


:i 


But  is  this  indeed  "  the  Complete  Life  "  ? 
\l  B  n  Unquestionably  I  might  easily  have 
strengthened  my  case  with  a  more  im- 
posing show  of  instances.  Thus  to  the 
list  of  homonyms,  pp.  392-397,  I  might 
1/  have  added  from  Diogenes  Laertius,  six 
Thaleses,  two  Pittacuses,  two  Perianders, 
six  Socrateses,  all  literary  characters  ;  seven 
Xenophons,  five  of  them  writers  ;  twenty 
Theodoruses,  all  either  authors  or  painters  ; 
five  Platos,  four  of  them  philosophers  ;  two 
Speusippuses,  both  philosophers;  six  Xeno- 
crateses,  four  of  them  writers;  ten  Crateses, 
four  of  them  philosophers  ;  four  Arcesi- 
lauses,  three  of  them  writers ;  eleven 
Bions,  all  literary  except  two  that  were 
sculptors  ;  two  Carneadeses,  both  writers  > 
eight  Aristodes,  all  writers  ;  eight  Stratos, 
nearly  all  literary  characters  ;  four  Lycons, 
two  philosophers  and  two  poets  ;  twenty 
Demetriuses,  all  prose  writers,  besides 
countless    other     Demetriuses  ;     fourteen 


<<i 


VI 


Preface, 


Heracleideses,  all  but  three  writers;  tour 
Antistheneses,  three  of  them  philosophers; 
six  Diogeneses,  three  philosophers,  and  all 
writers  ;  six  Menippuses,  two  of  them  phi- 
losophers ;  eight  Zenos,  four  of  them  phi- 
losophers ;  five  Chrysippuses,  two  of  them 
philosophers ;  ten  Pythagorases,  five  of 
them  contemporaries  ;  two  Epicharmuses, 
both  writers ;  four  Archytases,  three  of 
them  writers ;  two  Hippasuses,  both 
writers ;  four  Eudoxuses,  three  of  them 
writers  ;  five  Heraclituses,  all  writers  ;  two 
Xenophaneses,  both  poets  ;  two  Parmeni- 
deses,  both  writers ;  six  Democrituses,  four 
of  them  writers  ;  three  Protagorases,  all 
philosophers  ;  and  two  Timons.  And  if 
to  all  this  I  had  added  from  Bentley  the 
interminable  embroglio  upon  embroglio  of 
the  Logothetas,  the  Nonnuses,  the  Pytha- 
gorases, the  Clistheneses,  the  Phryni- 
chuses,  and  others,  and  had  further  shown 
from  a  multitude  of  authors,  from  Hesiod 


n 


I 


\  \ 


I      \ 


Preface. 


vu 


and  Acusilaus  to  Boeck  and  Roehl,  that 
the  homonyms  in  Dr.  Smith's  inestimable 
**  Dictionary,"  countless  as  they  are,  are 
not  a  twentieth  part  of  the  entire  number 
of  homonyms  on  record,  what  reader 
would  deny  the  extreme  probability  that 
there  were  indeed  two  distinct  Homers  ? 
And  the  authority  of  Xenophon,  Deme- 
trius, Archilochus,  and  Proclus ;  and  the 
books  that  were  written  by  the  ancients  to 
warn  their  readers  against  being  misled, 
as  pious  ^neas  was,  by  such  autonomasia  ; 
and  the  manifold  irreconcilable  discrepan- 
cies in  the  multitudinous  legends  of  our 
poet,  arising  from  confusing  him  with  a 
pseudo ;  and  especially  a  comparison  of 
Herodotus's  unadulterated  biography  of 
the  true  Homer  with  Plutarch's  and  Sui- 
das's,  and  the  pseudo-Lesches's  biogra- 
phies, where  the  true  and  the  false  Homer 
are  hopelessly  confounded  ;  all  this,  I  say, 
would  surely  convert  the  extreme  proba- 


/ 


VIU 


Preface. 


bility  into  absolute  certainty.  Unques- 
tionably, here  and  elsewhere,  my  case  is 
utterly  understated  and  underproved.  But 
how  few  readers  would  have  ti^Ierated  a 
much  larger  volume  ? 


/ 


( 

i 


'I 


CONTENTS. 


:o: 


CHAriEK  PAGE 

I.     From    his    Birth    to   his   Falling 

Blind         ...         ...         ...         ...  i 

II.     From    his    Falling   Blind   to    his 

Voyage  from  Samos       36 

III.     Hi.s  Sickness,  Death,  and  Burial.  89 


IV.     His  OWN  Account 
V.     His  Date 


VI.     His  Birthplace 


Vn.     His  Writings 


VIH.     Did  he  Write? 


IX.     The  pseudo-Homer 


X.     Our  Authorities 


XI.     Addenda 


123 
187 
212 
256 

309 
392 
421 

452 


,< 


THE 


COMPLETE  LIFE  OF  HOMER. 


.i 


The  welcome  citizen  of  every  clime, 
He  was  not  of  an  age,  but  of  all  time. 
And  therefore  hath  impartial  time  forgot, 
His  date,  race,  parentage,  and  native  spot.* 


CHAPTER    I. 


FROM    HIS    BIRTH    TO    HIS    EXILE    FROM 

SMYRNA.t 

When  /Eolian  Cyme  was  being  founded 
by  Charidemus  1033  B.C.,  Melanopus  (cor- 
rupted from  Melanippus,  an  heroic  cog- 
nomen common  to  Troy  and  Pylos),  the 
son  of  Ithagenes,  the  son  of  Krethon,  the 
son  of   Ithagenes,   the  son  of  Kretheus, 

*  All  the  verse  in  this  volume,  w^hether  translation 
or  otherwise,  is,  with  a  very  few  trifling  or  obvious 
exceptions,  my  own. 

-j-  N.B. — The  first  three  chapters  are  based  on  his  Life 
by  the  so-called  Pseiido-Herodottis^  with  nn7nerous  ad- 
ditions from  other  sources, 

B 


2        The  Complete  Life  of  Homer. 

the  son  of  Diodes,  the  son  of  Orsilochus, 
the  illegitimate  son  of  Kretheus  the  ^olid, 
a  ^  yeoman    of    but   limited   means   came 
thither  from  Magnesia  with  the  rest  of  the 
motley  Hellenic  crowd,  and  there  he  mar- 
ried   Clymene,   the    daughter  of  Onyras, 
the  son  in  all  probability  of  Archilochus  s 
Homer  of  Smyrna.     And  a  female  child 
was  born  to  him  from  her  bed,  to  whom 
he  gave  the  name  of  Kretheis,  daughter 
of    Kretheus,    in    commemoration    of  his 
illustrious  ancestor.     Just  so,   Libye,   the 
daughter  of  Epaphus,  the  son  of  lo,  gave 
her  children  the  names  of  Belus,  from  her 
great-uncle,  the  brother  of   lo,   her  god- 
dess-grandmother ;    and  Agenor,   from   a 
great-great-uncle,    and   also    an   ancestor, 
from  whom  she  was  fifth  in  descent,  both 
of   that    name.      So    Deucalion,    son    of 
Minos  by  a  second  wife,  an  ^olid,  kept 
up  the  memory  of  the  fact  that  his  mother 
was  a  Deucalid.       So  ^olion,    king   of 
Lesbos,  in  the  time  of  Homer,  kept  up 
the   memory   of    his    indefinitely   remote 
ancestor  ^olus  ;  and  Dorion,   the  fabled 
ancestor  of  Homer  the  Younger,  or  the 
pseudo- Homer,  of  whom  very  much  more 
anon,  midway  between  him  and  Atlas,  kept 


\  ^. 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer, 

up  the   memory   of  his  remote  ancestor 
Dorus.     The  old  family  names,  in  short, 
were  kept  up  for  centuries  and  centuries.  ' 
And  Melanopus  and  his  wife  died,  but 
he  bequeathed  his  daughter  to  the  care  of 
an   intimate  friend,   Kleanax  the  Argive. 
And,  as  time  went  on,  it  chanced  that  the 
girl   formed  an  illicit   acquaintance    with, 
and  became  pregnant  by,  one  Demagoras 
or    Demasagoras,   or    Dmasagoras  *    (the 
name    is    spelt    diversely),  a  Salaminian, 
who  would    seem    to  have  shortly  after- 
wards  gone   out   as    an    adventurer   into 
Egypt  t  and  there  died.    The  poet  appears 
to  have  retained  a  loving  feeling  towards 
a  father  I   cannot  find  that  he  ever  saw ; 
and,  therefore,  as   we   naturally  wish  to 
think   as  well  as   we   can   of   the   poet's 
father,  I  am  inclined  to  hope  that  he  was 
guilty  of  nothing  worse  than  mere  ordinary 
human  frailty.     The  poet  refers  over  and 
over   again  to  the    matter  in    this  way  ; 
and  though  at  one  time  inclined  to  depict 
him   in  the  blackest  colours,  him   whom 
the  poet  himself  has  blest,  I,  as  the  poet's 

*  Westermann's  "  Lives,"  p.  34,  I.  20. 
t  Ibid.,  p.  28,  1.  4. 

B   2 


\ 


%       The  Complete  Life  of  Homer. 


biographer,  have  no  right  to  curse.  But 
be  that  as  it  may,  whether  death  or  exile 
prevented  him  from  doing  poor  Kretheis 
right,  or  whether  he  was  a  mere  heartless 
adventurer,  here  one  day  and  gone  another, 
matters  very  little  to  our  story.  His  part 
in  the  *' Life  of  Homer"  is  as  slight  as 
that  of  the  hero's  father  in  ''  Tom  Jones." 
We  know  next  to  nothing  about  him. 
His  very  name  even  and  country  and 
ultimate  fate  are  not  matters  of  absolute 
certainty.  Whether  unprincipled  or  merely 
unfortunate,  how  has  his  sin  found  him 
out !  Of  what  a  blaze  of  immortal  glory 
has  it  not  deprived  him  !  But  to  return 
to  our  author. 

For  a  time  the  matter  of  poor  Kretheis's 
pregnancy  was  kept  secret  ;  but  when 
Kleanax  came  at  last  to  know  of  it,  he 
was  greatly  vexed,  good  man,  and  having 
-called  her  before  him  apart  froni  any  one, 
he  rebuked  her  severely,  pointing  out  to 
her  the  discredit  amongst  the  people  of 
the  place  that  would  needs  accrue  from 
her  misconduct.  Therefore  he  formed  the 
following  plan  in  her  behalf.  The  people 
of  Cyme  chanced  at  that  time  to  be  making 
a    settlement   in    the    bay   of    the    river 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer.        5 

Hermus, — ''the  eddying  Hermus/'  as  the 
poet  himself  calls  it, — and  Theseus  wishing 
to  make  it  of  the  same  name  as  his  wife, 
as  a  memorial  of  her,  proposed  Smyrna 
(for  that  was  his  wife's  name)  to  those 
that  were  founding  the  city  as  a  name  for 
it.  Now,  Theseus  was  amongst  the  fore- 
most of  the  Thessalians  that  founded 
Cyme,  being  descended  from  Eumelus, 
the  son  of  Admetus,  the  son  of  Pheres, 
the  son  of  Kretheus  and  Tyro,  and  a  man 
of  great  substance  ;  and  his  wife,  as  we 
may  fairly  assume  from  her  name,  was  an 
Amazon.  So  Kleanax  consigned  Kretheis 
to  Ismenias  the  Boeotian  in  charge  of  the 
settlers,  who  chanced  to  be  one  of  his 
most  intimate  associates. 

I  think  few  of  my  readers  will  be  dis- 
posed to  deny  that  the  conduct  of  Kleanax 
towards  the  poor  fatherless  and  motherless 
girl  about  to  become  a  mother  was  meanly 
heartless  and  cruel  in  the  extreme.  Homer 
never  makes  the  most  distant  allusion  to 
it  or  him,  which  alone  in  one  so  kindly  is 
sufficient  condemnation.  He  forgives  the 
unutterably  base  Thestorides,  and  even 
gratifies  his  family  by  naming  his  homonym 
with   honour   in   his  immortal  poem  ;  he 


6         The  Complete  Life  of  Homer, 

seems  utterly  unconscious  of  the  disgusting 
unmannerliness  and  worse  than  Hottentot 
gluttony  of  Creophylus,  and  immortalises 
him  by  bequeathing  him  the  sacred  memo- 
rial of  his  poems ;  but  Kleanax,  the 
**  mean  betrayer  of  the  blood"  of  his  inti- 
mate friend,  in  the  dark  hour  of  her  shame, 
despair,  and  agony,  he  absolutely  ignores. 

But  be  that  as  it  may,  the  poet's  mother 
left  her  native  city,  **  alone,  alone, — all, 
all  alone," — in  the  company  of  absolute 
strangers,  deserted  by  her  lover  and  with- 
out a  friend  in  the  wide  world,  and  arrived 
at  Smyrna. 

Smyrna,  the  ever-glorious  birthplace  of 
the  first  and  greatest  of  the  poets  of  anti- 
quity, is  charmingly  situated  on  the  banks 
of  the  little  river  Meles,  at  the  base  of 
the  Gulf  of  Smyrna  and  at  the  entrance  of 
the  great  and  fertile  valley  of  the  Hermus, 
under  the  rich  slopes  of  Mount  Tmolus, 
originally  founded  and  peopled  by  Tan- 
talus the  Bad,  and  called  Naulochus ;  but 
when  under  the  leadership  of  Androclus, 
son  of  Codrus,  the  Athenians  took  Ephesus 
from  the  Amazons  (1072  B.C.)  after  they 
had  occupied  it  just  a  century,  viz.,  ever 
since      1168      li.c,     they     proceeded    to 


i 


The  Complete  Life  of  Ho7ner,        7 

Smyrna,  where  I  should  presume  there 
were  now  but  small  remains  of  the  Naulo- 
chus of  Tantalus,  and,  having  founded  it 
anew,  called  it  after  the  greatest  of  their 
queens.  And  the  memory  of  the  intimate 
family  connexion  between  the  two  cities 
was  perpetuated  by  the  circumstance  that 
just  as  a  part  of  Smyrna  was  called  Tyche, 
and  just  as  a  part  of  London  is  called 
Marylebone,  so  a  part  of  Ephesus  re- 
tained the  name  of  Smyrna, — no  doubt 
that  quarter  in  which  a  residue  of  the  old 
inhabitants  still  resided.  What  else  is  to 
be  said  about  this  city  will  partly  be  seen 
as  we  proceed,  and  what  is  not  will  be 
best  reserved  to  the  time  when,  in  com- 
pany with  our  immortal  bard,  we  bid  a 
final  adieu  to  it. 

Here  poor  Kretheis  dwelt  in  melan- 
choly plight  for  some  few  months  till,  her 
time  for  bringing  forth  being  now  fully 
come,  one  day,  when  she  had  gone  out 
of  the  city  with  the  other  women  to  a 
certain  festival  on  the  banks  of  the  Meles, 
she  fell  into  the  pangs  of  labour  and 
brought  forth  Homer.  And  she  gave  him 
the  name  of  Melesigenes,  because  he  was 
born  on  the  banks  of  that  river. 


6         The  Complete  Life  of  Homer, 

seems  utterly  unconscious  of  the  disgusting 
unmannerliness  and  worse  than  Hottentot 
gluttony  of  Creophylus,  and  immortalises 
him  by  bequeathing  him  the  sacred  memo- 
rial of  his  poems ;  but  Kleanax,  the 
'*  mean  betrayer  of  the  blood  "  of  his  inti- 
mate friend,  in  the  dark  hour  of  her  shame, 
despair,  and  agony,  he  absolutely  ignores. 

But  be  that  as  it  may,  the  poet's  mother 
left  her  native  city,  ''alone,  alone, — all, 
all  alone," — in  the  company  of  absolute 
strangers,  deserted  by  her  lover  and  with- 
out a  friend  in  the  wide  world,  and  arrived 
at  Smyrna. 

Smyrna,  the  ever-glorious  birthplace  of 
the  first  and  greatest  of  the  poets  of  anti- 
quity, is  charmingly  situated  on  the  banks 
of  the  little  river  Meles,  at  the  base  of 
the  Gulf  of  Smyrna  and  at  the  entrance  of 
the  great  and  fertile  valley  of  the  Hermus, 
under  the  rich  slopes  of  Mount  Tmolus, 
originally  founded  and  peopled  by  Tan- 
talus the  Bad,  and  called  Naulochus ;  but 
when  under  the  leadership  of  Androclus, 
son  of  Codrus,  the  Athenians  took  Ephesus 
from  the  Amazons  (1072  B.C.)  after  they 
had  occupied  it  just  a  century,  viz.,  ever 
since      1168      i].c.,     they     proceeded    to 


I 


H 


I: 


V 


wi 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer.        7 

Smyrna,  where  I  should  presume  there 
were  now  but  small  remains  of  the  Naulo- 
chus of  Tantalus,  and,  having  founded  it 
anew,  called  it  after  the  greatest  of  their 
queens.  And  the  memory  of  the  intimate 
family  connexion  between  the  two  cities 
was  perpetuated  by  the  circumstance  that 
just  as  a  part  of  Smyrna  was  called  Tyche, 
and  just  as  a  part  of  London  is  called 
Marylebone,  so  a  part  of  Ephesus  re- 
tained the  name  of  Smyrna, — no  doubt 
that  quarter  in  which  a  residue  of  the  old 
inhabitants  still  resided.  What  else  is  to 
be  said  about  this  city  will  partly  be  seen 
as  we  proceed,  and  what  is  not  will  be 
best  reserved  to  the  time  when,  in  com- 
pany with  our  immortal  bard,  we  bid  a 
final  adieu  to  it. 

Here  poor  Kretheis  dwelt  in  melan- 
choly plight  for  some  few  months  till,  her 
time  for  bringing  forth  being  now  fully 
come,  one  day,  when  she  had  gone  out 
of  the  city  with  the  other  women  to  a 
certain  festival  on  the  banks  of  the  Meles, 
she  fell  into  the  pangs  of  labour  and 
brought  forth  Homer.  And  she  gave  him 
the  name  of  Melesigenes,  because  he  was 
born  on  the  banks  of  that  river. 


m 


9        The  Complete  Life  of  Homer. 

I  cannot  think  this  a  likely  story.  It  is 
not  likely  that  a  woman  would  so  flaunt 
her  shame,  or  that  a  mother  would  be  so 
cruel  to  her  child  as  to  compel  him  to 
carry  about  with  him,  wherever  he  went,  a 
name  for  all  his  schoolfellows  to  jeer  at, 
as  it  were  a  placard  upon  his  back  with 
the  words  "  Riverside  base-born  beggar's 
brat"  written  large  on  it.  Nor  is  the 
improbability  diminished,  supposing  that 
by  Melesigenes  the  hapless  mother  meant 
son  of  the  Meles,  but  rather  augniented. 
The  name  in  question,  if  such  be  its  true 
signification,  were  most  ridiculous,  ^  nay, 
most  impious,  as  applied  to  the  child  of 
such  bitter  shame  and  such  abject  poverty. 

Most  justly,  then,  does  Lucian  ridicule 
the  idea  of  our  poet's  name  being  changed 
subsequently  from  Melesigenes  to  Homer 
for  any  of  the  reasons  usually  alleged.  I 
do  not  doubt  that  he  was  blind,  and  con- 
sequendy  wanted  a  guide  to  go  with  him 
(Homou),  or  that  as  a  child  there  was  a 
pretty  story  of  his  saying,  "And  me  too" 
(Homou),  yet  not  more  was  he  named 
Homer  for  either  of  these  reasons  than 
Achilles  was  so  named  because  Thetis 
burnt    his    lips    off    in    the    magic     fire 


ff 


The  CojHplete  Lije  of  Homer,        9 

(a-cheilos),  or  the  Pythian  oracle  from  the 
decaying  body  of  the  serpent  Apollo  slew, 
or  the  Amazons  from  their  mutilating  one 
breast,    or    Mycenae    from    the     hilt    of 
Perseus's  sword  (myketus).     All  these  are 
merely  specimens  of  the  wretched  punning 
upon  names  of  which  the  ancient  Greeks 
were  never  weary,  but  it   were  absurd  to 
receive  it  seriously  into  this  most  veracious 
of  biographies.     As  well,  says  Lucian,  say 
his  fathers  name  was    Tigres  or    Pigres 
because   a   Tigres   or    Pigres   edited   his 
works  some  six   centuries  after  his  death, 
as  say  that  he  took  his  name  from  an  inci- 
dent which  happened  some  forty  years  after 
he  was  born.    True,  we  are  familiar  enough 
with  something  like  it  in  the   modification 
of  Abram's  name   to   Abraham,   but   the 
ancient  Greeks  had  no  idea  of  such  a  thing, 
as  Lucian's  joke  itself  proves,  which  to  us 
seems  rather  meaningless.     Homer,  then, 
was  called   Homeros  from  his  birth,  from 
various  Homers  that  had  gone  before  him, 
presumably    from    his   great-great-grand- 
father, born    1 104  B.C.,   i.e.,  more  than  a 
century   ago,  at   Cyme,    the  scene  of  his 
mother's  childhood,  but,  perchance,  not  of 
her  birth,  if,  as  some  authors  say,  she  was 


lo      The  Complete  Life  of  Homer. 


born  at  los.  When  he  acquired  the  sur- 
name of  Melesiofenes  we  have  no  means  of 
knowing  ;  it  is  simply  a  striking  description 
of  the  scene  of  his  birth,  and  may  have 
been  applied  to  him  at  any  time.  But  if 
Melesigenes  was  not  the  name  given  him 
at  the  first,  still  less  was  Melesianax,  a 
name  most  ludicrous  for  a  poor  sempstress's 
ragged  half-starved  brat. 

But  these  names,  and  others  to  the  same 
tune,  were  obviously  coined  afterwards, 
when  the  singular  incident  of  his  birth  was 
a  stigma  no  longer,  but  an  aureola. 

Up  to  this  time  her  helplessness,  as  a 
hapless  outcast  many  months  gone  with 
child,  had  compelled  Kretheis  to  live  with 
the  man  upon  whom  her  harsh  guardian 
had  so  indelicately  forced  her  ;  but  now  she 
began  to  look  about  her,  and,  as  soon  as 
she  could,  she  quitted  his  reluctant  hospi- 
tality, and  henceforth  maintained  herself 
and  her  boy  with  the  labour  of  her  hands, 
now  working  for  one  employer  and  now 
for  another. 

No  doubt  there  were  plenty  of  ill-natured 
busybodies  then  as  now,  ever  ready  with 
their  miserable  gossip  to  smooth  the  up- 
ward path  of  a  poor  fallen  woman  with  the 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer, 


1 1 


treacherous  ice  of  their  sour-eyed  charity. 
Hence  her  frequent  change  of  em- 
ployer. 

And  with  her  precarious  earnings  the 
forsaken  girl-mother  paid  as  well  as  she 
could  for  the  schooling  of  her  bright-eyed 
boy.  These  were  times  of  bitter  hardship 
for  the  poor  fatherless  poet,  as  he  tells  us 
in  lines  that,  when  his  poems  came  to  be 
not  less  studied  in  the  closet  than  recited 
at  the  festive  board,  were  universally 
understood  to  refer  to  the  piteously  sad 
days  of  his  early  boyhood  : — 

"  But  the  sweet  faces  from  the  cruel  day, 
That  rnakes  the  boy  an  orphan,  fade  away  ; 
And  still  he  hangs  his  head  like  drooping  flower, 
And  floods  his  cheeks  with  brine  from  that  sad  hour, 
In  his  sore  need  his  timid  steps  he  bends, 
His  face  all  blushes  to  his  father's  friends, 
His  heart  too  full  to  tell  what  orphans  feel, 
Soft  clinging  to  their  robes  in  mute  appeal, 
But  scarce  his  quivering  lip  hath  toucht  the  cup 
By  shame  and  pity  sister  twins  fiU'd  up,' 
When,  rushing  in,  a  rudely  blooming  boy, 
His  mother's  torment  and  his  father's  joy, 
Snatches  it  from  his  hand  and  bids  him  go. 
With  angry  taunt  and  contumelious  blow, 
'  Be  off ! '  he  cries,  *  we  want  not  here  a  brat 
At  our  door  begging  with  a  coat  like  that.' 
To  widow'd  mother,  wan  with  toil  and  care, 
Then  does  the  wretched  lad  in  tears  repair.' 


1 2       The  Complete  Life  of  Homer, 


The  picture  is  indeed  exact.  First,  the 
widowed  mother  without  one  friend  left  in 
the  world  ;  first  her  father,  then  her  mother 
dead,  her  father  in  deadly  combat  against  the 
Amazons  and  then  her  mother  of  lingering 
disease  and  heart-break  ;  and  last  of  all  her 
husband,  or  he,  at  least,  who  the  charity  of 
undying  love  undoubtingly  believes  would, 
had  fortune  been  kinder  (oh  !  fond,  un- 
reasoning logic  of  a  true  woman's  heart), 
one  happy  day  have  been  so ;  without,  I 
say,  one  friend  left  in  the  world,  and  toiling 
at  the  loom  of  a  stranger  for  the  support 
of  herself  and  her  little  one.  And  next 
the  child.  Can  we  doubt  that  antiquity 
saw  in  the  little  Astyanax  the  idealised 
double  of  the  poet's  early  childhood  when 
it  twisted.  Ions:  doubtless  after  his  death, 
the  Melesigenes  of  his  mother  into  the 
Melesianax  of  the  Homerolater,  so  perfect 
a  compound  as  it  is  of  the  Trojan  prince- 
let's  two  names,  Scamandrius  and  Asty- 
anax ?  But  this  is  not  all  or  nearly  all.  I 
turn  to  another  of  the  lives  and  read,  ''The 
name  of  the  king  of  the  Lydians  at  that 
time  was  Maeon,  and  he  loved  the  girl 
(Kretheis)  for  her  beauty,  and  married  her. 
And   when    Homer   was    born,    Kretheis 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer.      13 

dying  in  childbirth,  Maeon  reared  the  infant 
as  his  own.  And  after  no  long  time  had 
elapsed  he  himself  also  died."*  Now, 
divesting  the  above  passage  of  all  the 
garish  false  ornaments  of  post-Aristotelian 
Hellenism,  and  bringing  to  bear  upon 
it  what  we  know  of  Maeon  from  the 
Latin  epigram,  and  from  the  following 
pregnant  passage  in  the  life  by  Suidas, 
**  Maeon  who  came  with  the  Amazons 
to  Smyrna,"t  we  extract  the  following 
highly  important  information. 

Maeon,  a  successful  Greek  adventurer, 
the  leader  of  the  Amazons  at  that  time 
and  descended  from  the  Maeon,  being  a 
countryman  of  Ismenias  and  one  of  the 
""  father's  friends,"  spoken  of  in  the  above 
lines,  showed  a  disposition  to  take  the 
child  and  his  mother  under  his  protection. 
The  child  had  just  touched  the  cup  of  dawning 
prosperity  with  his  lips  when  it  was  dashed 
from  them  by  the  grim  King  of  Terrors. 
And  the  circumstances  of  his  (Maeon's) 
death  were  as  follows : — The  Lydians 
being  overmastered  by  the  ^Eolians,  and 


*  Plutarch's  "Life  of  Homer,"  p.  22. 
t  Suidas's  *'  Life  of  Homer,"  p.  32. 


14       The  Complete  Life  of  Homer. 


having  decided  to  leave  Smyrna,  and  their 
leaders  having  proclaimed  that  he  that 
would  follow  them  should  leave  the  city, 
Homer,  being  still  a  child,  said  that  ''he 
too  wished  to  go  with  them."  The  con- 
fiding child's  **  and  me  too "  excited  a 
tender  smile  in  all  that  heard  it,  and  was 
never  forgotten.  **  His  mother  kept  all 
these  things  in  her  heart,"  as  we  learn  on 
the  authority  of  St.  Luke.  Homer  himself, 
indeed,  tells  us  more  than  once  that  his 
mother  was  in  the  habit  of  doing  so,*  and 
even  to  this  moment  (9.14  p.m.,  February 
15,  1887),  we  have  them  in  print  before 
us.  But  just  at  that  delicate  crisis  the  last 
great  leader  of  the  Amazons  died,  and 
his  Amazonian  widow  and  mongrel  brat 
treated  poor  little  Homer,  and  his  widowed 
mother,  with  a  wild  outbreak  of  savage 
insolence  that  the  sensitive  boy  never 
forgot. 

But  better  days  were  now  at  hand. 

Now  there  was  at  Smyrna  at  this  time, 
one  Phemius  by  name,  an  Athenian, 
(according  to  Timolaus),  the  son  of  Prona- 
pus  or  Pronopus  t  (according  to  Diodorus 

*  ^'  g-y  Odyss.,  xxii.  57,  and  Odyss.,  i.  361. 
t  Tzetzes  corrupts  the  name  into  Pornapus. 


The  Complete  Life  of  Hofjier.      15 

Siculus),  who  instructed  the  boys  of  Smyrna 
in  literature,  and  in  every  other  branch  of 
a  liberal  education.  For  more  about  him 
see  Chapter  Will,  He,  being  a  bachelor, 
hires  Kretheis  to  work  up  for  him  several 
batches  of  wool,  which  he  was  in  the  habit 
of  receiving  from  his  boys  as  their  school 
fees.  What  happy  days  for  boys  those 
must  have  been,  when  after  they  had  once 
mastered  the  difficulties  of  the  horn  book 
and  the  copy-book  (and  not  even  that, 
according  to  the  Wolfians),  they  had 
nothing  more  to  do,  but,  if  little  Smyrnian 
boys,  to  sing,  dance,  recite  poetry  after 
their  venerable  master,  and  play  music  ; 
or,  if  little  Persian  boys,  to  shoot  the  bow 
and  tell  the  truth, — that  is,  not  shoot  the  long 
bow !  But  not  quite  such  happy  days  for 
the  master  surely,  if,  in  return  for  all  his 
instruction,  he  only  received  certain  instal- 
ments of  unwrought  hosiery.  Speaking 
as  a  pedagogue,  I  do  not  quite  wish 
I  had  lived  in  those  days.  I  prefer 
cash  payment  myself.  And  she  worked 
daily  in  his  house,  manifesting  much 
decorum  and  ever  "keeping  her  body 
in  temperance,  soberness,  and  chas- 
tity," to   quote   the   words   of    our   dear 


1 6       The  Complete  Life  of  Homer, 

venerable  old  Church  Catechism;  and 
Phemius  was  greatly  pleased  with  her, 
and  at  last  he  proposed  to  her  that  she 
should  keep  house  for  him  ;  for  he  was 
rather  of  the  mind  of  Adam  than  of  the 
mysogynist  African  potentate  whom  all- 
powerful  love, — 

**  His  cheek  pufft  out  with  elfin  laughter," — 

garred  with  an  arrow  right  through  his 
heart,  wriggle  and  cry  ''  Ohj'no,  never ! " 
as  he  would,  to  marry  the  beggar  girl 
Cophetua.  He  thought  with  the  old 
bachelor  of  the  Greek  comic  poet,  a 
broken  fragment  of  whom  I  have  presumed 
conjecturally  to  fill  up  and  translate  as 
follows  : — 

"  My  name  is  Live-alone, 
Alas  !  ot  all  men  I  am  most  unhappy, 
Oh  !  how  I  pity  cynic  Timon's  doom. 
Alone,  unwedded,  without  wife  or  child, 
Without  a  friend  in  the  wide  world,  to  die."* 

So  he  urged  her  with  many  such   argu- 
ments as  he  thought  likely  to  prevail  upon 

*   Opofici  Cf.  {lovtTTL  jVIo»'orpo7roc,  ft  tiq  ftpoTOjy 
JlaradXioQ  aia^u)  ce  Tijuiijovog  ftiov 
Aya/iov  n^vyov  oivQvfiov  airpoaocov 
AyEkatTTOv  adiaXek'roy  idioy  njfjoia. 


The  Co7nplete  Life  of  Homer,       17 

her,  and,  above  all,  touching  her  bright- 
eyed,  glorious  boy,  that  if  he  adopted  him 
as  his  son  (as,  of  course,  he  would,  if  she 
married  him),  and  brought  him  up  and 
educated  him,  he  would  turn  out  a  shining 
character ;  for  he  perceived  that  the 
lad  was  intelligent,  and  of  very  good 
natural  parts.  So,  ultimately,  he  persuaded 
her  to  do  as  he  desired.  Andromache 
and  Astyanax  over  again.  You  will  ob- 
serve here  the  mother  sacrificing  her  own 
sexual  instincts  to  an  unpalatable  second 
marriage,  for  the  sake  of  her  little 
Homer. 

"  So  the  fair  boy  with  thorns  and  acorns  crown'd, 
And  holding  in  his  hand  a  pan  of  bread, 
*  The  worse  I  have  escaped,  the  better  found,' 
Sang  with  his  schoolmates  round  the  marriaee 
bed."  ^ 

(The  solemn  nuptial  bed,  with  images 
of  Love,  Hymen,  &  Co.  inside,  heavily 
curtained  from  all  eyes  prior  to  its  being 
carried  up  to  the  bridal  chamber.)  This 
exceedingly  curious  custom,  so  strongly  at 
variance  with  the  celibatarian  views  of  St. 
Paul,  the  reader  will  find  in  the  learned 
pages  of  Suidas.     The  thorns  and  acorns, 

c 


1 8       The  Complete  Life  of  Homer, 

of  course,  representing  the  wild  savage 
days,  when  there  was  no  such  thing  as 
marriage,  but  men  lived  and  begat  children 
viore  ferarzwt  ;  the  pan  of  bread,  the 
manners  and  customs  of  civilised  life. 
And  he  was,  as  Phemius  wisely  judged,  of 
a  good  natural  capacity,  and  with  the 
advantages  he  now  enjoyed  of  a  careful 
education,  speedily  shot  far  ahead  of  all 
his  schoolfellows.  And  at  this  time  must 
have  happened  the  other  version  of  the 
poet's  celebrated  boyish,  *'  And  me,  too," 
which  also  we  derive  from  the  account  of 
the  learned  Suidas.  '*  And  he  was  called 
Homer,  because,  when  there  was  war 
between  the  Smyrniotes  and  the  Colopho- 
nians,  and  the  Smyrniotes  were  delibe- 
rating, the  poet,  like  Christ  amongst  the 
Jewish  doctors,  spoke  with  a  certain 
divine  clairvoyance,  and  gave  his  advice 
along  with  the  rest,  as  they  sat  in  council 
debating  of  the  impending  war." 

"  At  twelve  years  old  he  talk'd  with  men, 
The  Jews  all  wond'ring  stand ; 
But  he  obey'd  his  mother  then, 
And  came  at  her  command." 


But  this,  of  course,   is  much   ado   about 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer.      19 

nothing.       The   spirited   boy    hated    the 
Amazons  worse  than  English  boys  used  to 
hate  the  French  in  the  time  of  Napoleon. 
And  he  had  not  forgotten  the  abominable 
insolence  of  that  rude  lout,  young  Mseon, 
how^  he   snatched    the    platter    of   warm 
porridge  out  of  his  hands  when  he  was 
half-starving ;  and  the  blows  and  the  ill- 
usage   with    which   he   accompanied    the 
outrage.     So,  amid  the  smiles  of  the  half- 
pitying,   half-admiring  assembly,  he  cried 
out   ''  Homer !  "    amongst   the    rest   who 
gave   in   their   names  to   fight  for    their 
native   city.     On   which    occasion  it  was 
that  his  celebrated,  **  And  me,  too,"  was 
uttered,  the  reader  must  please  decide  for 
himself.     But  he  must  not  permit  himself 
to  doubt  that  either  of  the   ''  And  me's  " 
refers    to    aught    but    what    rests    on   a 
perfectly  historical  basis.     The  first  "  And 
me  "  refers  to  the  time  when  the  Amazons 
found    themselves     compelled     to     leave 
Smyrna,      which.      Homer     being     born 
1015   B.C.,    must  have    been    about    1007 
or     1008    B.C.,    possibly   a   little    eariier. 
The    second,    when    the   Amazonian   re- 
fugees amongst  them  had  stirred  up  the 
Ionian    Colophonians  to  war  against  the 

c  2 


20      The  Complete  Life  of  Homer. 

iEolid  Smyrniotes.  That  I  may  not  be 
uncharitably  suspected  of  stating  aught 
that  I  cannot  most  fully  substantiate,  I 
appeal  here  to  the  indisputable  authority  of 
Strabo.  ''And  the  Smyrnaean  Amazons" 
(that  is,  the  Amazons  that  occupied  the 
Smyrnaean  part  of  the  city)  *'  having  de- 
parted from  amongst  the  Ephesians,  when 
the  Athenian  lonids  took  Smyrna,  1072 
B.C."  (and  they  left  the  city,  presumably, 
not  long  after,  say  about  1063  B.C.,  much 
as  they  were  compelled  by  the  Thessalian 
iEolids  to  leave  Smyrna  later  on),  *'  led 
an  army  to  the  place  where  Smyrna  now 
lies ;  but  then  it  was  occupied  by  the 
Leleges"  (who,  I  infer,  had  easily  mas- 
tered the  feeble  remnant  of  the  Tantalid 
colonists  of  Naulochus).  ''And  having  cast 
them  out "  (even  as  they  had  seized  and 
cast  out  the  Naulochians),  "  they  built  Old 
Smyrna,  distant  about  20  stades  from  the 
present  Smyrna.  But  afterwards,  having 
been  driven  out  by  the  -Cohans,  in  the 
manner  already  detailed,  they  fled  to 
Colophon,  and  having  gone  forth  with  the 
people  there,  they  took  back  the  city  they 
had  founded — the  said  Smyrna — as  Mim- 
nermus  also  tells  us  in  his  Nanno,  saying 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer.      21 


of  Smyrna  that  it  had  ever  been  a  bone  of 
contention,  a  city  much  desired  and  sought 
for,  because  of  its  marvellous  natural  ad- 
vantages." 

To  recapitulate : — 

Androclus  took  Ephesus  from  the       B.C. 
Amazons         ...  1072 

The  Amazons  of  Ephesus  left  that 
place  and  went  to  Smyrna, 
at  that  time  Lelegian,  but 
before  Tantalid  1063 

Andraemon  took  Colophon  ...      1043 

Cymae  founded  by  the  Thessalian 

-Solids 
...  ..•  ... 

The    Thessalian    Solids   founded 

Smyrna  1015 

The    Amazons    of   Ephesus   were 

expelled  from  Smyrna  ...      1007 

The  Amazons,  being  settled  at 
Colophon,  took  advantage  of 
the  rivalries  between  the 
lonid  and  ^olid  Greeks  to 
stir  up  a  war 1003 

I  do  not  at  all  infer  that  the  war  between 
Smyrna  and  Colophon  in  Homers  boy- 
hood decided  the  long  protracted  struggle. 
The   Smyrniotes    certainly   defeated    the 


1033 


22       The  Complete  Life  of  Homer. 

Chians  later  on,  and  were  at  last  trea- 
cherously surprised  by  the  Amazono- 
Colophonians  later  still.  I  must,  there- 
fore, not  speak  more  here  of  a  period  at 
which  we  have  not  yet  arrived. 

Our  poet,  "  increased  in  wisdom  and 
stature,  and  in  favour  with"  the  gods  and 
his  fellow-citizens,  till,  on  his  arriving  at 
manhood,  in  the  course  of  a  few  more 
years,  of  which  we  have  hardly  any  record, 
he  was  found  to  be  in  no  wise  inferior  to 
Phemius  himself  in  all  the  branches  of 
a  liberal  education  at  that  period.  So 
Phemius  died,  leaving  the  lad  all  his  sub- 
stance, and  not  long  after  Kretheis  died 
also.  And  Homer  took  his  old  masters 
place,  and  ''  taught  the  young  idea "  of 
Smyrna  '*  how  to  shoot,"  in  return  for 
such  payment  in  kind  as  enabled  him  to 
board,  clothe,  and  wash  himself,  and  lay 
by  something  to  add  to  the  store  that  his 
good  old  master  had  left  him ;  and  he 
became  distinguished  for  learning,  and 
being  now  principal  of  the  Academy  of 
Belles-Lettres  and  Music  at  Smyrna, 
became  more  and  more  the  object  of 
universal  admiration.  And  not  only  did 
the  people  of  the  place  hold  him  in  the 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer.      23 

highest  honour,  but  also  the  strangers  that 
flocked  to  the  place,  for  Smyrna  was 
already  an  important  entrepot,  and  much 
corn,  conveyed  to  it  very  plentifully  from 
the  surrounding  district,  was  exported 
from  it.  The  strangers,  therefore,  when 
they  had  transacted  their  business,  spent 
their  leisure  hours  sitting  in  the  school  of 
Homer ;  and  amongst  them  was  one 
Mentes,  a  shipmaster,  who  made  money 
by  carrying  goods  or  passengers,  having 
sailed  from  Leucadia  for  corn,  in  a  ship  of 
which  he  was  both  owner  and  skipper,  a 
well-educated  man  for  those  times,  and 
well  versed  in  history ;  that  is  to  say,  he 
knew  the  whole  of  the  mythological  part 
of  Lempriere's  "  Classical  Dictionary," 
could  recite  a  good  many  of  the  traditional 
verses  of, Linus,  Olen,  Marsyas,  Pam- 
phos,  Chrysothemis,  Philemon,  Olympus, 
Hyagnis,  Orpheus,  and  Musaeus,  read 
fluently,  write  boustrophedon,  and  strum 
an  air  or  so  on  the  fiddle.*  This  accom- 
plished gentleman-skipper  sought  to  per- 
suade Homer  to  leave  his  school,  and  sail 
with  him,  all  found,  and  pay  so  much  a 

*  Hdt.  i.  5  ;  Xen.,  Mem.  3,  9,  11. 


24      The  Complete  Life  of  Homer. 

month,  and  see  the  world  while  he  was 
still  young.    Even  as  Shakespeare  says: — 

*'  Home-keeping  youths  have  ever  homely  wits." 

Whether  our  poet  would  have  decided  to 
exchange  the  sure  but  humble  profits  of 
his  calling, — one  boy  supplying  his  but- 
chers meat,  another  his  boots,  another  his 
hosiery,  another  the  flowers  for  \i\sparterre 
and  the  vegetables  for  his  kitchen  garden, 
another  his  pig,  another  his  cow,  and  so  on, 
— I  cannot  say.  But  now  vast  political 
events  were  disturbing  the  calm  of  a  life,  that 
for  the  eight  or  nine  last  years  had  flowed 
on  in  a  stream  as  placid  as  the  Thames  at 
Mortlake.  The  great  prosperity  of  the 
-/Eolian  capital  had  excited  the  keenest 
Ionian  earth-greed.  On  the  one  side, 
Chios,  on  the  other,  Colophon,  the  poor 
little  port  of  Smyrna  was  exposed  to 
constant  attack  ;  the  former  for  ever 
threatening  the  harbour  from  the  sea,  the 
latter  from  the  south,  by  land.  The 
Smyrnaeans  triumphantly  record  a  severe 
rebuff  they  gave  to  the  Chians.  But 
weakened,  it  would  seem,  by  a  series  of 
petty  wars,  the  struggle,  though  brilliantly 
triumphant    at    first,    proved     ultimately 


The  Co7nplete  Life  of  Ho77ier,       25 

disastrous,  and  Smyrna  fell  a  victim  to 
a  treacherous  attack  of  the  combined 
Amazons  and  Colophonians,  about  990  B.C. 
This  is  the  event  to  which  Mimnermus 
refers.  I  do  not  believe  that  Smyrna 
hereupon  at  once  merged  into  the  Ionian 
Confederation,  but  it  probably  never  re- 
covered its  full  liberty  of  action,  and 
ultimately  did  so,  induced  mainly  by  its 
intimate  relations  with  Ephesus,  the  capital 
thereof.  After  this,  ^Eolis,  bereft  of  its 
one  important  town,  sank  into  utter 
insignificance.  Smyrna  thus  being  now 
virtually  a  member  of  the  Ionian  con- 
federacy, and  the  Amazons  he  hated,  his 
mother's  enemy,  Hyrnetho,*  and  young 
Maeon  amongst  them,  altogether  in  the 
ascendant,  he  was  the  more  easily  induced 
to  listen  to  the  tempting  proposals  of  his 
newly-made  friend,  Mentes.  Hermesianax, 
the  Colophonian,  in  his  erotic  attempt  to 
make  out  all  the  great  poets  from  Homer 
to  Anacreon,  the  drivelling  victims  of 
the  tender  passion,  inflicts  upon  his 
hapless  readers  some  of  the  most  un- 
mitigated,  unintelligible    trash    that    was 


*  Proclus's  **  Life  of  Homer."    Westermann. 


26       The  Complete  Life  of  Homer. 

ever  penned  ;  still,  doubtless,  he  is  right 
in  his  main  fact  :  Homer  did  now 
'*  spread  his  wings  to  Ithaca/'  Or,  as 
our  author  says  :  Having  given  up  his 
school  he  sailed  with  Mentes,  and  where- 
ever  he  came  he  took  note  of  everything 
that  was  in  any  way  remarkable  ;  and,  by 
questioning  the  people  of  the  place,  made 
himself  acquainted  with  all  that  was  to  be 
known  about  it.  And  can  it  be  reason- 
ably doubted  that  he  committed  to 
writing  the  immense  stores  of  learning 
he  thus  acquired  ?  And  putting  out  to 
sea  from  Lydo-Pelasgic  Etruria, — so  inti- 
mately connected  with  the  Odyssean 
legends  of  the  Telegonia,— and  Iberia,  they 
arrived  at  Ithaca.  And  it  chanced  to  Homer 
that  he  was  laid  up  here  with  a  very  severe 
disorder  of  the  eyes  which  he  had 
contracted.  And  Mentes,  finding  himself 
obliged  to  leave  him  under  medical  care, 
while  he  himself  completed  his  return 
voyage  to  Leucadia,  committing  the 
sacred  trust  of  the  venerable  bard  to  a 
very  dear  friend  of  his.  Mentor,  the  son 
of  Alcimus  of  Ithaca,  and  earnestly 
entreating  him  to  take  all  possible  care 
of    the     better    half    of    his    soul, — his 


Tlie  Complete  Life  of  Homer,       27 

Maeonian  Virgil, — sailed  away  to  his 
destination,  but  not  before  he  had 
assured  his  sick  friend,  like  the  good 
Samaritan  of  St.  Luke,  that  on  his  return 
he  would  take  him  on  board  again,  and 
enrol  him  once  more  in  the  ship-book. 
And  Mentor  took  diligent  care  of  the 
invalid,  for  he  was  in  easy  circumstances, 
and  bore  a  character  for  integrity  and 
hospitality  far  superior  to  that  of  any 
of  the  men  of  Ithaca.  Here  Homer  had 
an  opportunity  of  learning  all  about 
Ulysses,  and,  in  the  fervour  of  his 
youthful  enthusiasm,  even  fancied  that 
he  saw  his  ghost,  and  conversed  fami- 
liarly with  it.  *  And  here,  according  to 
to  Cramer's  *' Anecdota"  (vol.  iii.  p.  199), 
he  stayed  a  long  time,  as,  indeed,  seems 
highly  probable,  from  the  astonishing 
accuracy  with  which  he  has  described  it. 

Now  the  people  of  Ithaca  say  that  he 
fell  blind  then  whilst  he  was  still  among 
them.  But  this  is  not  so.  He  was  cured 
there  and  fell  blind  afterwards  at  Colo- 
phon. And  Mentes,  on  sailing  back 
from   Leucadia,  anchored  off  Ithaca,  and 


Philostratus's  **  Heroica." 


28      The  Complete  Life  of  Homer. 

received  the  poet  on  board  again  as  he 
had  promised.  And  for  a  considerable 
time  they  voyaged  together.  But  when 
the  poet  arrived  off  Colophon,  he  was 
once  more  attacked  with  his  old  com- 
plaint, and  being  this  time  unable  to 
rally  from  it,  finally  lost  the  use  of  his 
eyes. 

Here,  then,  end  our  Sindbad's  voyages, 
and  with  them  the  present  chapter. 

But,  first,  a  few  remarks.  We  have  in 
the  foregoing  very  imperfect  precis  of 
Homer's  voyage  from  Smyrna  to  Iberia, 
and  from  Iberia  to  Ithaca,  and  from 
Ithaca  to  Colophon,  the  roughly-hinted 
headings  of  the  account,  of  course  adapted, 
almost  past  recognition,  to  the  necessities 
of  song,  which  he  himself  has  given  us 
in  his  ''Odyssey."  It  is  easy  to  reduce 
the  diamond  to  charcoal,  but  wholly  im- 
possible to  reproduce  the  living  wood 
with^  its  bark  and  its  myrrh,  its  leaves 
and  its  blossoms,  and  golden  apples*  So 
it  is  easy  to  reduce  the  diamond  of 
ancient  mythology  to  the  worthless 
residuum  of  modern  hyperscepticism,  but 
wholly  impossible,  save  by  the  magic 
wand  of  true  genius,  to  reproduce  those 


I 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer.      29 

glowing  days  of  the  dewy  morning  of 
humanity  of  which  it  is  the  spiritualised 
aroma. 

Still,  something  even  now  may  be 
saved  by  the  positive  method  of  history, 
out  of  the  priceless  wreck  that  the  sea 
of  time  has  cast  upon  our  shores.  The 
most  unlearned  of  my  readers  has  only 
to  glance  at  the  map,  to  see  that  in 
going  from  Smyrna  to  Eastern  Spain 
(Iberia),  the  poet  was  especially  likely 
to  touch^  at  Egypt,  in  a  greater  voyage, 
and  at  Sidon  in  a  voyage  of  less  extended 
radius,  or  at  both  in  the  same  voyage, 
and  of  both,  and  of  Egypt  especially,  he 
speaks  abundantly.  All  antiquity  be- 
lieved that  he  travelled  in  Egypt.  His 
intimate  acquaintance  with  its  antiquities 
has  been  fully  pointed  out  by  Diodorus 
Siculus,  and  others.  He  is  even  believed 
to  have  derived  the  materials  of  his  two 
great  poems  from  thence.  Of  all  which 
more  in  its  proper  place.  But  without 
going  so  far  as  this,  it  is  abundantly 
probable  that  he  once  or  oftener  stayed 
some  time  off  the  coast  of  Egypt,  and 
probably  journeyed,  more  or  less  to  and 
fro  inland  in  the  way  of  business,  as  first 


30       The  Complete  LifeoJ  Homer, 

mate  to  the  Argo,  or  whatever  the  name 
of  his  friend's  merchant  vessel  was. 
And  as  poet  he  would,  we  may  be  sure, 
take  the  opportunity  of  catching  eager 
hold  of  all  the  information  on  the  history, 
antiquities,  manners,  and  customs  of  the 
various  countries  that  came  in  his  way, 
even  as  our  author  emphatically  tells 
us  he  ever  did.  But  I  quite  agree  with 
the  venerable  author  of  *'  Homeric 
Synchronisms,"  in  dismissing  as  idle  the 
notion  that  he  ever  travelled  in  Egypt, 
in  the  modern  sense  of  the  word.  Shall 
I  here  save  time  by  briefly  setting  down 
my  own  private  view  of  the  matter  ?  It 
is  this,  then.  The  voyage  of  Menelaus, 
that  of  Ulysses,  and  that  of  Telemachus, 
indicate  three  voyages  of  Homer,  a  longer 
and  a  shorter,  and  a  quite  short  one. 
First,  of  the  longer.  That  would  be  from 
Troy  (Bounarbachi)  to  the  Cicones 
(Thrace),  from  Thrace  to  Cythera 
(Cerigo),  from  Cythera  by  stress  of  wind 
in  the  course  of  ten  days  to  the  Lotophagi 
(Northern  Africa),  from  Northern  Africa 
to  Sicily,  from  the  western  coast  of 
Sicily  to  the  Island  of  -^olia,  from  the 
Island    of   ^olia    to    the    Laestrygones, 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer. 


31 


and  from  the  Laestrygones  to  CEa,  i,e,, 
from  Stromboli  (where  stress  of  wind 
once  more  forced  him  back)  to  Lipari, 
and  from  Lipari^  to  Vulcania.  Last  of 
all,  from  Vulcania  along  the  north-west 
coast  of  Sicily  by  Naulochus  (Milazzo), 
N.B.  Naulochus,  near  which  the  Seirens 
dwelt  (worthless  women,  that  our  poet 
made  acquaintance  with  on  landing,  but 
scorned  to^  be  beguiled  by,  still  he  visited 
them  for  information-sake,  but  took  the 
wise  precaution  of  bringing  no  money 
with  him  for  them  to  rob  him  of),  through 
Scylla  and  Charybdis  (the  Strait  1)f 
Messina)  to  Phoeacia  (Corfu),  and  last 
of  all  being  driven  from  Leucadia  by 
stress  of  wind  to  Ithaca.  That  the 
disease  in  his  eyes  had  just  laid  him 
prostrate  appears  clearly  from  **  Odyss.," 
xiii.  1 1 7-2 14  : — 

''  And  he  woke  up  in  his  dear  fatherland, 
And  knew  it,  after  absence  long,  no  more, 
For  round  him  had  the  goddess  cast  a  cloud, 
Therefore,  did  all  look  other  than  it  was. 
'  Oh,  me  ! '  cried  he,  *  what  land  of  men  is  this  ? 
Insolent,  wild,  and  lawless,  like  the  Cyclops, 
Or  kind  to  strangers,  just  and  fearing  God? 
Oh  !  Heaven  avenge  me  on  the  faithless  king 
Who  swore  that  he  would  bring  me  home  and  did 
not.' " 


32       The  Complete  Life  of  Homer. 

The  foregoing  passage  is  many-sided. 
First,  it  refers  to  the  phenomena  of  partial 
blindness.  The  hero  saw  "men  as  trees, 
walking,"  and  at  the  same  time  awoke  to 
the  fact  that  this  was  not  the  land  that  had 
been  described  to  him, — the  Leucas  of  the 
ship's  chart  to  which  he  was  bound, — but 
Ithaca  to  which  he  had  no  thought  oi 
coming  (lines  3,  4).  Secondly,  lines  5-7 
are  precisely  in  the  key  of  those  we  have 
in  the  life  farther  on,  when  he  goes  to 
Neonteichos,  and  again  when  he  finds  safe 
shelter  at  last  at  Chios.  Thirdly,  lines  i, 
2,  refer  to  his  sensations  when  he  arrives 
at  Smyrna,  of  which  more  in  the  next 
chapter,  after  an  absence  of  some  eight 
years.  Fourthly,  lines  8,  9  refer  to  the 
promise  of  Mentes  to  come  and  fetch  him, 
and  imagine  7nore  poetico  that  he  has 
failed  to  do  so.  We  are  here  dimly 
reminded  of  Ariadne  in  the  desert  island 
of  Naxos,  and  Robinson  Crusoe  on  his 
desert  island. 

So  much  for  the  voyage  of  Ulysses,  the 
first  and  longest.  Next  for  that  which, 
still  speaking  metaphorically,  I  will  call 
that  of  Telemachus.  Homer's  second 
voyage  took  probably  the  very  same  direc- 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer,      33 

i      tion  as  that  of  Telemachus,  just  as  his  first 
had  taken  the  same  as  that  of  Ulysses.  From 
Leucas  (Santo  Mauro)  to  Pylos  (Gastione) 
from  Pylos  to  Sparta  (Misistra),  where  he 
pays  a  most  significant  visit  to  old  Diodes 

I        at  Pherce    (Pheres).     From  Sparta,  con- 
trary  to  origmal  intention  of  a  longer  voy- 
age, back  to  Leucas  again.     The  reader 
will  observe  that   Homer's  allegory  does 
not  run  exactly  on  all  fours.     As  Macaulay 
observes,  long  allegories  never  do.    Leucas 
is   not    Ithaca,    though  suggestively-pro- 
vokingly  near  it,  which  to  my  mind  proves 
the  strict  veracity  of  our  author.     Had  he 
not  been  telling  the  exact  truth,— ^>J^>^^. 
mam  veritudinem,— to  the  very  best  of  his 
ability,  he  might  just  as  well  have  made 
Mentes  of  Ithaca  as  of  Leucas ;  the  alle- 
gory would  have  run  the  smoother  for  it. 
Perhaps,  however,  he  does  well  thus  to 
enrich  the  interest  of  the  poem,  regarded 
purely  as  fiction ;  for,  after  all,  Troy  is  no 
more    Smyrna    than     Leucas    is    Ithaca. 
Homer's  third  and  last  voyage  was  that  of 
Menelaus.     Of  this  he  gives  the  following 
outline  : —  ^ 

''  The  wealth  that  I  had  gain'd,  from  land  to  land 
Kanging,  like  white-nosed  bee  from  flower  to  flower. 


34       The  Complete  Life  of  Homer, 

I  brought  on  ship-board  in  the  eighth  year,  home. 

Cyprus,  Phoenicia,  and  ^gypt,  I 

Sought  in  my  wanderings  ;  Ethiopia,  too. 

And  the  Sidonians,  and  the  Troglodytes 

That  underground  in  far  Arabia  dwell, 

And  Libye,  where  the  lambs  are  born  with  horns, 

For  thrice  a  year  the  sheep  bring  forth,  and  there 

Nor  monarch  on  his  throne,  nor  humble  hind 

Lack  cheese,  or  meal,  or  honey-flavour'd  milk, 

But  all  is  plenty  in  that  happy  land." 

Need  I  say  that  Homer  was  never  in 
any  of  these  wonderful  places,  but,  no 
doubt,  in  this  last  voyage  he  certainly  did 
get  as  far  as  Egypt,  and  trafficked  there 
for  some  time.  To  go  by  the  card,  he 
probably  voyaged  from  Leucas  to  Crete, 
from  Crete  to  Egypt,  thence  after  a  some- 
what protracted  stay  to  Phoenicia,  and 
thence  to  Cyprus.  After  this  we  have  no 
clue  to  his  course  till  we  find  him  at  the  end 
of  his  eight  years'  voyages  at  Kolophon. 

Possibly  Mentes  went  on  his  former 
route  to  Smyrna,  and  from  thence  to  the 
far  West,  and  then  back  home  ;  but  finding 
his  illustrious  fellow-voyager  had  again 
contracted  his  old  malady,  he  was  obliged 
once  more  to  pay  him  off  and  leave  him  at 
Kolophon. 

And  now  I  think  I  need  say  no  more  of 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer. 


00 


Homer's  travels  by  sea.     I  presume  every 
reader  of  this  work  has  either  Pope's,  or 
Cowper  s,  or  Chapman's,  or  Worsley's,  or 
Butcher's  translation  of  the  **  Odyssey, "  and 
with  that  and  the  map  he  can  beguile  a 
pleasant  hour  in  filling  up  the  above  sketch. 
I  have  traced  the  '^  Odyssey"  here  and 
elsewhere,    as    far   as    I    safely  may,    for 
materials  for  a  truly  historical,  and  in   no 
respect  mythological,  life  of  the  great  poet. 
Farther   I   do  not  think  I  ought  to  go,  as, 
after  all,  the  "  Odyssey  "  is  only  a  work  of 
fiction,  though  (the  reader  must  particularly 
note  this)  of  all  works  of  fiction  the  most 
autobiographical,  even  as  of  all  epic  poems 
the  **  Iliad"  is  the  most  historical.     The 
''  Iliad  ''  is  as  true  as  Shakespeare's  John, 
and  four  Henries,  and  Richard  HI.  ;  and 
the   '^  Odyssey"    is    as    true    as    Scott's 
''  Waverley,"      -  Old      Mortality,"      and 
"Fortunes  of  Nigel."     Like  the  monkey 
with  a  cat's  paw  getting   at  the   roasted 
chestnuts,  we  gingerly  pick  out  of  them 
every    grain    of    true     history    that     we 
can.      Thus   here,    I   doubt   not,    Homer 
visited  the  various  places  I  have  mentioned, 
but  how  far  the  allegory  has  personal  refer- 
ence I  dare  only  here  and  there  speculate. 

D  2 


CHAPTER  II. 

FROM    HIS    EXILE    TO    HIS    LAST    JOURNEY 

FROM    CHIOS. 

One  foolish  myth  tells  us  that  Homer 
was  struck  blind  by  the  arms  of  Achilles ; 
another,  by  the  wrath  of  the  now  deified 
Helen ;  from  which  I  infer  (i)  that  he  fell 
blind  on  his  return  from  a  visit  to  the  ruins 
of  Troy,  at  a  later  period.  He  was  not, 
therefore,  quite  blind  yet,  but  suffering 
cruelly  from  eye  disease.  He  talks  a  great 
deal  of  the  wealth  acquired  by  his  doubles, 
Ulysses  and  Menelaus,  but  I  shrewdly 
suspect  that  most  of  it  fell  into  the  hands 
of  his  skipper,  Mentes,  and  that  the  poet 
himself  had  not  much  of  **  the  abundant 
wealth  "  he  was  so  afraid  of  leaving  in  his 
room,  lest  it  should  become  the  spoil  of  his 
landlady, — *•  the  very  beautiful  tripods  and 
cauldrons  of  gold  and  embroidered  apparel, 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer,      37 

the  iron,  the  brass,  and  the  gold,  and  the 
abundant  substance,"  of  which  he  talks  so 
often  and  so  glibly.  Mentes  had  it  all. 
Mentes  was  the  publisher  with  his  fine 
place  in  Surrey ;  Homer,  the  poor  Grub- 
street  author,  quaking  when  the  day  came 
round  for  his  interview  with  Mrs.  Raddle. 
Doubtless,  however,  our  poet  received  a 
certain  small  lump  of  pay  when  he  parted 
finally  with  his  skipper  at  Colophon. 

At  Colophon  he  resumed  his  abandoned 
trade  of  school-keeping,  and,  even  as  late 
as  the  time  of  Lesches,  the  author  of 
'*  The  Contest  between  Homer  and 
Hesiod,"  the  people  of  Colophon  showed 
the  identical  spot  where  he  commenced  his 
poetical  career  (though  the  great  bard  had 
chirped  a  little  before  in  the  cool  caves 
of  Smyrna)  with  his  *'  Margites."*  Wilkie 
Collins  tells  us  he  wrote  his  marvellous 
book,  **  The  Moonstone,"  under  precisely 
similar  circumstances  of  severe  mental  and 
physical  suffering.  Strange,  is  it  not,  how 
the  flame  of  genius  rises  disdainfully  su- 
perior to  this  gross  mortal  disguise  of  clay  } 

And  from  Colophon,  his  sight  now  grow- 
ing worse  and  worse,  he  bent  his  steps  to  his 

*  Lesches,  "  Agon,"  p.  34.     Westermann. 


38       The  Coinpleie  Life  of  Homer. 


native  place,  Smyrna,  and  there,  according 
to  our  author,  and  not  before,  as  Lesches 
informs  us,  at  Colophon,  he  took  the  great 
work  of  his  life  in  hand.  That  is  to  say, 
he  began  his  '*  Kuklos."  And  for  a  time, 
we  are  told  by  Stephanus  Byzantius,  he 
sojourned  at  Cenchrea^,  in  the  Troad, 
while  he  acquired  as  full  information  as 
possible  about  the  affairs  of  Troy  (see 
Stephanus  Byzantius,  art.  Cenchrece).  He 
had  distinguished  himself  as  a  highly- 
gifted  being  before,  and  at  Colophon, 
Lesches  tells  us,  he  wrote  his  **  Margites," 
a  statement  I  will  leave,  for  the  present,  un- 
questioned. But  now,  having  a  little  store 
in  hand,  the  savings  of  many  years'  toil  and 
exposure,  and  privation  by  sea  and  land, 
he  devoted  himself  wholly  to  his  sacred 
-callinof. 

It  was  at  this  period  of  his  life,  doubt- 
less, and  not  before,  that  he  became  totally 
blind.  Obviously,  the  great  diversity  of 
accounts  indicates  that  the  loss  of  sight 
was  very  gradual.  There  are  no  less  than 
four  of  them.  The  Ithacans  said  he  be- 
came blind  when  at  Ithaca.  No,  said  the 
Colophonians,  he  recovered  from  the 
attack  at  Ithaca,  but  fell  blind  at  Colophon. 


\ 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homei\      39 

No,  said  a  third  legend,  he  was  blinded  by 
the  arms  of  Achilles  ;  that  is,  he  became 
stone  blind  on  his  return  to  Smyrna,  after 
paying  a  visit  to  the  ruins  of  Troy  during 
his  sojourn  at  Cenchreae.  No,  said  a 
fourth  legend,  he  lost  his  sight  through 
the  anger  of  the  now  deified  Helen,  the 
same  as  Stesichorus  did  ;  that  is,  his 
already  impaired  vision  was  wholly  de- 
stroyed by  his  too  ardent  devotion  to  his 
poetical  studies.  I  need  hardly  remind 
my  readers  that  the  ancient  Greeks  saw  a 
judgment  in  every  calamity  that  can  befall 
our  suffering  race ;  still  less  need  I  inflict 
upon  them  three  or  four  pages  full  of  such 
names  as  Phaethon,  lasius,  Actseon,  Sten- 
tor,  Linus,  Thamyris,  and  Stesichorus,  to 
prove  so  mere  a  truism. 

But  the  legend  here  referred  to  proves 
something  more.  It  proves, —(i)  that 
Homer  was  now  far  on  with  his  **  Kuklos  "; 
(2)  that,  Stesichorus-like,  his  original  por- 
trayal of  the  fair  curse  of  Asia  was  very 
severe,  and  very  unlike  his  subsequent 
one  ;  (3)  that  the  story  of  the  blindness  of 
Thamyris  has  a  personal  reference.  As 
Phaethon  fell  a  victim  to  his  devotion  to 
the  study  of  astronomy,  and  lasius  to  his 


40       The  Complete  Life  of  Homer. 

devotion  to  agriculture,  so  Thamyris  and 
Linus  before,  and  other  sweet  poets  after 
him,  from  Stesichorus  to  Milton,  fell  a 
victim  to  their  devotion  to  the  Muses.  As 
we  see,  by  a  crowd  of  instances,  the  high 
gods  punish  us  alike  if  we  refuse  to  wor- 
ship them,  and  if  we  worship  them  over- 
much. We  must  only  look  at  them  as 
Moses  looked.  But  with  the  example 
before  our  eyes  of  Thamyris  in  the  **  Iliad,"* 
and  still  more  that  of  Demodocus  in  the 
•*  Odyssey,"— 

"  Whom  the  Muses  loved  full  dearly, 
And  gave  him  both  good  and  ill ; 
Of  the  sight  of  his  eyes  they  bereaved  him. 
But  gave  him  sweet  minstrel  skill ; "  \ 

and,  most  of  all,  that  of  the  blind  old  man 
— Homer  himself — in  the  hymn  to  ApolloJ 
to  doubt,  with  Lucian  and  others,  that  our 
poet  was  blind  at  all,  is  altogether  forbid- 
den by  the  canons  of  Homeric  orthodoxy. 
And  now  being  entirely  blind,  and  having 
spent  all  his  savings,  partly  on  the  neces- 
saries of  life,  partly  on  learned  researches, 
and  partly  in  vain    appeals    to   the   sons 

♦  Iliad,  ii.  594-600.         f  Odyssey,  viii.  63,  64. 
\  Hymn,  i.  172. 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer,      41 

of  -^sculapius,  at  Smyrna,  to  avert  the 
impending  catastrophe  of  absolute  loss  of 
sight,— Oh.  for  the  "  very  beautiful  tripods 
and  cauldrons,  and  gold  and  embroidered 
apparer*  of  the  poet's  dream,— finding 
himself  without  any  means  of  subsistence, 
he  determined  to  repair  to  Cyme.  So, 
travelling  through  the  plain  of  Hermus  he 
arrived  at  Neonteichos  {Anglice  Newali),  a 
colony  of  the  Cymaeans.  Now  this  place 
was  founded  eight  years  after  Cyme,  i.e. 

1025  B.C. 

Here,  it  is  said,  he  stood  at  the  open 
door  of  a  shoemaker's  workshop,  and  sang 
as  follows  : — 

"  Oh,  do  not,  pray,  deny  me, 
But  on  my  need  have  pity, 
Ye  sons  of  deer-eyed  Cyme, 
That  dwell  in  this  brave  city. 

And  where  the  lofty-tressed  wood 

Of  Same  meets  the  plain. 
The  Jove-born  honey-luscious  flood 

Of  rippling  Hermus  drain." 

Sardene  or  Sardene,  or  Sardone,— it  is 
spelt  in  so  many  ways,  I  have  ventured,  in 
my  translation,  to  clip  the  dubious  vowel 
altogether, — whichsoever  it  be,  is  a  moun- 


42       The  Complete  Life  of  Homer. 

tain  that  overhangs  the  river  Hermus  and 
the  town  of  Neonteichos. 

It  may,  perhaps,  interest  readers  to  see 
how  carefully  our  poet  corrected  and  re- 
corrected  all  but  his  most  hasty  and  worth- 
less productions.  This  the  reader  may  see 
for  himself  in  the**  Iliad"  and  the ''Odyssey," 
but  nowhere  is  it  more  conspicuous  than 
in  the  epigrams  that  I  have  translated  in 
this  work.  Thus  the  fourth  line  of  Epi- 
gram I  has  the  following  variations  : — 

**  Ye  who  dwell  in  the      lofty       city 

[laudable] 
The    deer-eyed    daughter  of  Cyme  " 
[lovely-eyed] 


Or, 


Or, 


"  Of  Cyme  the      deer-eyed    maiden  '* 

[lovely-eyed] 

"  Of  the  lovely-faced  nymph  of  Juno :" 
[deer  eyed] 


die  last  variation  meaning,  that  when  the 
Amazons   had  taken  the  heaven-detested 
city,  Juno   rewarded  them  with  a  century 
of  empire  over  Asia  Minor. 
Lastly  : — 

"  Ye  who  dwell  in  the      lofty       city, 
The  deer-eyed  daughter  of  the  firmament :  " 
[lovely-eyed] 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer,      43 

meaning  much  the  same  as  the  preceding 
variation,  only  much  more  prettily  ex- 
pressed. 

Nor  did  the  poet  find  it  more  easy  to 
satisfy  himself  in  the  fourth  line,  of  which 
the  variations  are  as  follow  : — 

"  Drinking  the  divine  water  of  the  river  stream  :" 

[of  the  god-like  river] 
[of  the  divine  river] 

the  variations  in  the  last  line  are 

**  Of     eddying         Hermus,"  &c. 
[fairly  flowing] 

In  his  ''  Lives  of  the  Poets  "  Johnson 
has  pronounced  a  similar  exemplification 
of  the  laborious  industry  of  Pope  to  be 
profoundly  interesting.  And  the  multitu- 
dinous readings  of  the  first  stanza  of  Ariosto 
are  unquestionably  amongst  the  best  known 
curiosities  of  literature.  Certainly  it  is 
worth  mentioning  in  our  poet  s  life  that  he 
altered  so  much,  the  more  so  that  his 
altering  his  pieces  so  much  is  a  sure  proof 
that  he  wrote  them  down,  else  all  these 
variations  would  surely  not  have  been 
preserved  even  during  his  life-time,  much 
less  for    3,000  years  afterwards.      But  I 


44       The  Complete  Life  of  Homer. 


The  Coynplete  Life  of  Homer,      45 


make  something  more  than  mere  honest 
painstaking  out  of  all  these  variations.  I 
make  out  that  Homer  recited  his  epigram 
first  at  Neonteichos  with  line  2,  as  in 
the  Life  of  Lives  (p.  4)  : — 

*'  Ye  who    dwell   in   the  lofty   city,    the   deer-eyed 
daughter  of  Cyme." 

But  when  he  got  to  Cyme  he  recited  it 
in  the  form  : — 

"  Ye  who  dwell  in  deer-eyed  Cyme,  the  lofty  city  of 
the  blue  vault  of  heaven." 

Or, 

"  Ye  who  dwell  in  the  much-lauded  city  of  the  lovely- 
eyed  nymph  of  Juno." 

Now  the  shoemaker  s  name  was  Tychius. 
And  when  he  had  heard  the  above  ditty,  he 
determined  to  receive  the  stranger  within 
his  doors,  for  he  pitied  him,  seeing  that  he 
was  blind.  So  he  bade  him  come  into  his 
workshop,  and  said  he  should  share  his 
havings.  So  he  came  inside.  And,  sitting 
in  the  shop,  many  persons  being  there,  he 
showed  them  his  last  volume  of  poems, 
containing,  *'The  Rideof  Amphiaraus,"and 
the  hymns  to  the  gods  which  he  had 
written ;  and,  as  seated  in  the  shoemaker's 


room,  he  declaimed  his  views  concerning 
what  was  said  by  those  present,  he  appeared 
worthy  of  admiration  to  those  that  heard 
him. 

So,  for  a  time,  Homer  maintained  him- 
self at  Neonteichos  by  his  poetry.  And 
the  Neonteichites  were  in  the  habit  of 
exhibiting,  even  to  the  time  of  Herodotus, 
the  place  in  which  he  used  to  sit  and 
exhibit  his  poems.  And  very  greatly  did 
they  reverence  it.  And  very  greatly  did 
they  reverence  the  poplar,  too,  which,  they 
say,  grew  up  there  after  Homer  came 
amongst  them. 

But  as  time  went  on,  and  things  went  as 
ill  as  ever  with  him,  he  determined  to  try 
Cyme  once  more,  to  see  if  he  could  do 
any  better  there  than  at  Neonteichos. 
Now,  about  this  time  died,  probably  miles 
from  Cyme,  one  Midas,  a  considerable 
person  in  those  parts,  but  no  more  king 
of  Phrygia  than  Maeon  was  king  of 
Lydia  (these  are  both  alike  extravagant 
absurdities  of  the  Cymaeans,  as  recorded, 
I  presume,  in  the  lost  works  of  Ephorus), 
and  no  more  to  be  confounded  with  the 
ass-eared  owner  of  the  Pactolian  gold- 
mines,   than    the  Ma^on   that  for  a  short 


46       The  Co7nplete  Life  of  Horner, 

time,  in  Homer's  boyhood,  befriended  the 
poor  hapless  orphan,  with  Mceon,  the 
son  of  Haemon,  the  son  of  Creon,  twice 
regent  of  Thebes ;  but,  doubtless,  the  Midas, 
of  whose  wife,  Harmodice,  Heraclides 
Ponticus  tells  us  that  she  first  made  (I  forget 
what)  for  the  Cymeeans.  So,  on  Homer's 
arrival  at  Cyme,  his  mother's  native  city, 
the  kinsfolk  of  the  deceased  gentleman 
(Midas)  begged  the  poet  to  oblige  them 
with  a  copy  of  verses  to  put  upon  his 
tombstone.  The  poet  complied,  and 
dashed  off  the  following  quatrain,  which  is 
to  be  seen  there,  our  author  tells  us,  "even 
to  this  very  day,"  engraved  on  the  monu- 
ment, upon  which  a  virgin  of  brass  (some 
goddess,  doubtless)  is  supposed  to  address 
the  passers  by  as  follows  : — 

*'  (I  am  a  brazen  virgin,  and  I  lie  on  the  tombstone 
of  Midas.) 
As  long  as  streams  do  flow,  and  trees  do  bloom, 
And  sun  and  moon  in  turn  illume  the  sky, 
Remaining  on  this  much-lamented  tomb, 
Midas  lies  here,  I  warn  each  passer  by." 

That  the  above  is  Homeric  there  can  be 
no  doubt,  whatever.  It  is  read  in  (i)  Plato, 
Phaedr.,  p.  264  D.  ;  (2)  Dion  Chrysost., 
Or.,  xxxvii.  p.  465  ;  (3)  Diog.  Laert.,  i.  89; 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer,      47 

(4)  The  Epigrams  of  Homer,  No.  3  ;  (5) 
Certam.,  Hom.  et  Hes.,  15;  (6)  Anthol. 
Palat.,  i.  p.  348.  Longinus  also  quotes 
the  first  and  second  line  as  an  instance  of 
the  true  sublime  ;  Sextus  Empiricus  gives 
us  the  line  as  originally  written,  and  Diog. 
Laert.  gives  us  a  third  line,  subsequently 
expunged  by  our  poet. 
The  lines  as  originally  written  being  : — 

E<rr*  av  vdiop  re  vat],  &c., 

HtXtoc  t\  &c., 

Kat  TTora^oi  ye  pecjcny  uvaKXv^rj  te  OaXaacra, 

The  last  line  was  subsequently  struck  out, 
and  the  first  line  altered  into 

EtTT  ay  v^Ljp  re  peri,  Szc, 

as  we  now  have  it. 

And,  sitting  in  the  assembly-room  of  the 
elders,  he  charmed  those  that  heard  him 
with  his  melodies,  and  amazed  them  with 
his  wisdom.  Whereupon  he  proposed 
that  ^  they  should  maintain  him  at  the 
public  expense,  and  he,  in  return,  would 
render  them  for  ever  most  glorious 
amongst  mankind.  So  they  invited  him 
to  the  next  meeting  of  the  Town  Council, 
there  to  discuss  the  question.     And  when 


48       The  Complete  Life  of  Homer. 

the  Council  met  he  stood  up  amongst  them, 
and  repeated  his  proposal.  And  having 
done  so,  he  made  his  bow,  and  sat  down 
on  a  seat  outside.  Figure  him  to  yourself, 
gentle  reader,  sitting  on  a  wooden  bench 
outside,  with  head  bent  low,  that  venerable 
mendicant,  with  a  face  clever  and  thought- 
ful beyond  all  words,  but  Socratically 
ugly  and  deformed  by  blindness,  and  with 
bushy  iron  grey  beard,  all  unkempt  and 
squalid. 

"  Oh,  qualis  facies  et  quali  digna  tabella." 

And  when  he  was  gone  they  deliberated 
what  answer  they  should  make  him.  And 
those  that  had  heard  him  in  the  assembly- 
room  were  in  his  favour,  but  the  majority 
of  the  Council  opined  that,  if  they  were  to 
maintain  all  the  blind  people  that  came  on 
the  tramp  to  Cyme,  they  would  soon  have 
a  pretty  crowd  of  frowsy  applicants  on 
their  door-steps.  And  from  that  time  he 
that  was  before  called  Melesigenes  (born 
on  the  banks  of  the  Meles)  was  called 
Homer  (the  Blind  Man),  not  so  much 
because  he  was  the  victim  of  so  common 
a  calamity,  as  because  his  blindness  was 
thus  impiously  scorned  at  by  those  Little- 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer,      49 

souls,— his  blindness,  which  should   have 
excited  a  more  profound  pity  even  than 
that  of  the  veteran  that  had  twice  saved 
his  native  land  from  ruin,  and  then,  at  last, 
in  his  grey  hairs,  and  blind  with   extreme 
old  age,  piped  in  trebles  of  second  child- 
ishness,   ''Date    obolum    Belisario,~date 
obolum    Belisario!"     Not   that    he   could 
possibly  have  wanted  the  sixpence,  doubt- 
less he  had  rouleaux  of  gold  at  home,   but 
the  "  marble-hearted  fiend  "  that  cracked 
poor  Lear's  great  heart,  had  cracked  his 
too;  and,  either  he  was  under  the  delusion 
that  Reade  attributes  to  the  felon  banker 
in  his    **  Hard  Cash,"  or,  it  was  a  crazy, 
childish   trick,  inspired  by  the   miserable 
impotent   anger  of  a   worn-out  old   man 
in  the  last  piteous  flickerings  of  departing 
reason. 

But  to  return  to  the  sapient  Town 
Council  of  Cyme.  Having  arrived  at  the 
above  decision,  the  clerk  went  out  to  our 
poet,  as  he  sat,  pauper-like,  on  a  bench  out- 
side,  and  tapping  him  on  the  shoulder,  in- 
formed him  that  his  offer,  he  regretted  to 
say,  was,  to  use  the  phrase  now  in  vogue, 
"  declined  with  thanks."  His  offer  being, 
as  the  reader  will,  doubtless,  remember,  an 

E 


50      The  Complete  Life  of  Homer, 

unlimited  supply  of  the  finest  poetry  the 
world  has  ever  seen  or  will  see,  in  return 
for  board,  costing,  say,  sevenpence  a  day 
(viz.,  bread  a  penny,  potatoes  a  halfpenny, 
tea  a  halfpenny,  milk  a  halfpenny,  sugar  a 
farthing,  fish  or  eggs  a  penny,  meat  three- 
pence, pens,  ink,  paper  and  gum  a  farthing), 
lodging,  washing,  and  a  suit  of  clothes 
eve^y  other  year.  And  when  he  heard  it 
he  was  much  hurt,  and  sang  as  follows  :— 

"  Of  what  a  fate  has  Father  Jove 
Made  hapless  me  the  prey, 
Since  in  my  gentle  mother's  lap 
A  hapless  babe  I  lay, 

Where  the  bold  Phriconian  horsemen 
Built  their  towers  along  the  steep, 

Where  thou  ^olian  Smyrna  dwell'st, 
Lash'd  by  the  neighbouring  deep." 

This  epithet,  too,  like  the  lines  discussed 
in  the  two  preceding  epigrams,  cost  our 
poet  much  use  of  the  transverstis  calamus, 
the  ink-eraser  and  the  gum-bottle.  The 
following  are  the  different  variations  : — 

"  Ocean  smitten, 
Ruler  over  many  people, 
Majestic  in  sovereignty, 
Majestic-shored." 

Let,    then,    what  I    have   already  said 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer.      51 

suffice  without  further  wearying  the  reader 
with  these  petty  details,  as  proofs  that  no 
idea  can  be  more  erroneous  than  that  our 
poet  extemporised  everything  and  cor- 
rected nothing  :  though  he  wrote  with  ease 
he  wrote  with  no  little  pains  too. 

But  to  return  to  the  mournful  sono-  of 
the  heart-transfixed  wild  swan  of'^the 
Meles  : — 

"  Through  which,  oh,  sacred  Meles, 
Thy  glorious  waters  flow, 
From  whence  those  glorious  damsels 
Jove's  daughters  dear,  did  go, 

This  divine  land  and  people 

Meaning  to  glorify ; 
But  they  despise  the  poet's  lay, 

And  message  from  on  high  ! 

All  who  from  this  time  suffer  so, 

On  my  sad  fate  shall  think, 
And  curse  their  folly,  so  their-name 

Till  crack  of  doom  shall  stink. 

But  I  the  fate  that  from  the  womb 

The  gods  have  me  assign'd, 
Hope  unfulfilled  and  shaken  faith, 

Will  bear  with  patient  mind. 

Nor  will  I  any  longer  stay 

In  thy  holy  streets,  O  Cyme, 
But  to  some  other  city  go, 

Since  thus  you  do  deny  me." 

E   2 


52       The  Complete  Life  of  Homer. 

The  above  verses  contain  strong  internal 
proof  both  of  their  authenticity  and  of  their 
truth  to  history.  Surely  no  forger  would, 
under  such  circumstances,  have  called  the 
land  and  city  of  those  miserable  slaves  of 
lucre  '*  divine,"  and  their  streets  *'  holy." 
But  Homer  did,  even  while  every  drop  of 
blood  within  his  veins  boiled  with  anger, 
and  every  nerve  quivered  with  agony. 
And  why  ?  Because  in  it  his  mother  was 
born,  and  in  it  she  spent  a  bright  and 
joyous  girlhood,  till  the  death  of  both 
parents  withered  her  Eden,  and  the  subde 
craft  of  him  that  tempted,  and  the  stern 
austerity  of  him  that  judged  her,  banished 
her  weeping  and  wailing  from  it. 

And,  can  we  doubt  that   this   incident 

gave  rise  to  the  curse  of  Chryses  in  the 

First  Book  of  the  "  Iliad"  ?— 

"  And  in  silent  anger  the  old  man  went 
By  the  shore  of  the  roaring  sea. 
And  with  hands  entwined  and  head  low  bent, 
To  Apollo  thus  pray'd  he  : — 

*  Oh,  hear  thou  thy  outraged  prophet's  moan, 
Lord  of  the  silver  bow, 
May  the  Greeks  for  my  tears  atone, 
Beneath  thy  shafts  laid  low.' " 

N.B.— Chryses  is  doubly  the  representa- 


Tfie  Complete  Life  of  Homer,      53 

tive  of  our  poet,  both  as  the  priest  of  Apollo 
and,  more  especially,  as  the  priest  of  the 
Temple  of  Apollo,  built  at  Cilia  by 
Homer  s  fellow-solids.  The  poet,  there- 
fore, hints  here,  in  its  proper  place,  the  title- 
page,  that  the  author  of  the  poem  was  a 
Pelopideo-Thessalian  yEolid,  whose  an- 
cestor was  at  the  time  of  the  siege  of  Troy 
a  resident  in  the  Troad. 

And  now  ensued  a  something  that  I  shall 

use  my  best  efforts  to  render  interesting 

to  my  readers.     H  is  mother  had  called  him 

Melesigenes  at  the  hour  of  his  birth,  as  we 

have  seen ;  and  he  had  trudged  afoot  to 

Cyme  because  it  was  his  mother's  native 

city,  and  in  it  he  meant  to  live  and  die,  and 

make  it  for  ever  glorious  ;  but  now  that  he 

had  been    equally   neglected  in  his   own 

native  city  and  his  mother's,  and  spurned 

ignominiously  by  both,  he  flung  from  him 

that  epithet  (name  it  had  never  been)  with 

indignant  scorn,  as  it  were  a  viper  that  had 

stung  him.     He  did  more.     I  have  already 

said  he  was  baptised  and  signed  with  the 

sign  of  the  cross — the  visible  cross  it  was 

his  lifelong  doom  to  bear — under  the  name 

of  Homer.     But  now  he  did  not  change 

his  name,  it  is  true,  but  he  modified  it.    We 


54       The  Complete  Life  of  Homer. 

know  how  the  name  of  the  Father  of  the 
Faithful  was  modified  from  Abram  to 
Abraham  ;  even  so  that  of  the  Father  of 
Poetry  was  modified  from  Homeros  to 
Homeros.  Homeros,  the  name  as  pro- 
nounced by  Homer's  maternal  great-grand- 
father, signified  to  the  Grecian  ear  exactly 
what  Hostage  (a  name,  doubtless,  to  be 
found  in  the  Post-Office  Directory)  does  to 
ours.  Homeros  was  what  the  Cymaeans, 
in  their  swinish  ignorance,  called  him  when 
they  made  that  blasphemous  jeer  of  theirs 
at  the  expense  of  the  Blind  Man.  Homer, 
in  his  righteous  indignation,  caught  up  the 
moral  obscenity,  and  called  himself  Blind 
Man  from  that  hour.  There  is  the 
unmistakable  air  and  ring  of  truth  in  the 
pseudo-Herodotus's  account  of  the  matter. 
And  while  I  am  convinced  that  Homer 
was  always  called  Homer,  and  never 
Melesigenes,  I  do  believe  also  that  he  now 
changed  the  inflection  of  his  name,  and 
that  all  the  dictionaries  accentuate  his  name 
erroneously.  After  this,  proceeds  our 
author,  he  went  from  Cyme  on  to  Phocsea, 
after  invoking  a  solemn  curse  upon  the 
Cymaeans,  that  they  might  never  have  a 
poet   born  to  them  to   glorify  the  God- 


The  Complete  Life  of  Horner,       55 

defying,  true-poet-insulting  city  of  the  sons 
of  Demas.  And  they  never  have  had,  and 
never  will  have,  to  the  crack  of  doom. 
And  having  arrived  at  Phocaea  he  lived 
in  the  same  manner,  sitting  in  the 
Assembly-room,  and  exhibiting  his  poems 
there. 

And  at  Phocaea  at  this  time  one  Thes- 
torides  kept  a  boys'  school — a  right  bad, 
tgg  he  was,  as  the  event  proved.     He, 
becoming  aware  of  the  surpassing  excel- 
lence   of    Homer's    poetry,    proposed    to 
maintain  and  take  care  of  the  poor  blind 
Samson  if  he  would  only  let   him   enter 
in  his  books  the  poems  he  had  already 
written   on  loose   sheets,   and  bring   him 
such  other  poems  as  he  might  from  time 
to   time    compose.      And   the   poor  dear 
simple  child  of  genius  thought  this  a  first- 
rate  offer,  for  he  was  in  need  of  the  neces- 
saries of  life,  and  being  blind,  he  wanted 
some  one  to  wait  on  him.     So  he  boarded 
at  the  house  of  this  pitiful  rascal,  and  there 
he  wrote  his  lesser  ''  Iliad,"  of  which  the 
beginning  is  as  follows  : — 

"  I  sing  of  Ilium,"  etc. 

And  also   the  poem  called  "  Phocais," 


56       The  Complete  Life  of  Homer, 

which   the   people    of    Phoceea    say   that 
Homer  wrote  whilst  amongst  them.    And 
when  Thestorides  had  copied  neatly  into 
his    manuscript    books     "  The     Phocais " 
and  all  the  other  poems  which  Homer  had 
written   up  to   that   time,   he   formed  the 
design  of  leaving  Phoccea  and  exhibiting 
the  poetry  as  his  own.     Accordingly,  he 
left  Phocaea  and  went  to  Chios,  so  named 
not  from  Chion,  snow, — that    is   another 
Greek  pun,— but  from  Chio,  a  daughter  of 
Oceanus,  whose  daughter,  name  unknown, 
was   of  course    Chione ;    but    Chios    was 
named,    as    I    have    said,    not  from    her, 
but  from  her  mother.     There  were  many 
Chioses,    and    possibly   that   part   of    los 
where  Homer  landed  before  he  died  may 
have  been  called  Chios.     But  of  this,  more 
later   on.       Here    Thestorides   set    up    a 
school,  and  exhibiting  Homer's  poems  as 
his  own,  gained  no  small  credit  and  emolu- 
ment.    Many  of  my  readers  will  call   to 
mind  that  just  the  same  misfortune  befell 
the  Mantuan  Swan  on  his  first  coming  to 

Rome. 

Meanwhile  Homer  remained  at  Phocaea 
earning  his  living  by  reciting  his  poetry, 
and  knew  nothing  as  yet  of  Thestorides's 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer,      57 

ignoble  proceedings.     But  not  long  after 
merchants  from  Chios  came  to  Phocaea, 
and  having  heard  the  poems  of  Homer 
there,  which  they  had  often  heard  before 
at  Chios  from  Thestorides,  informed  our 
poet  that  a  school-keeper  at  Chios,  whence 
they  came,  was  making  a  great  sensation 
by  exhibiting   those  very   poems.     And 
Homer  knowing,   of  course,  at  once  that 
It  was  Thestorides,  hastened  with  all  his 
heart  and  soul  to  Chios.     But  when  he 
came  to  the  harbour  he  found    no    ship 
bound  for  Chios,  but  a  barge  preparing  to 
sail  to  Erythrae  in  quest  of  timber.     And 
approaching  it,  he  entreated  of  the  sailors 
to  receive  him  as  a  passenger,  urging  many 
inducements  to  persuade  them.    And  they 
consented,  and  bade  him  come  on  board. 
And   Homer,   after   thanking   them   very 
heartily  for  their  obliging  behaviour,  did 
so,   and  sang  them  an   impromptu  stave, 
according   to    his   custom,    entreating   al- 
"^/ghty,  earth-shaking  Neptune  to  give  to 
his  companions  a  favourable    gale  and  a 
safe  return,  and  to  himself  pious  and  God- 
fearing folks,  at  the  base  of  Mount  Mimas, 
to  entertain  him,   and  vengeance  on  the 
sly,  deceitful  villain  that  had  set  at  naught 


58       The  Co7nplete  Life  of  Homer, 

hospitable  Jove  in  his  treatment  of  the 
bHnd  guest  that  had  shared  his  salt. 

Here  and  elsewhere  nothing  gives,  in 
the  view  of  the  19th-century  reader,  such 
an  air  of  unreality  to  the  "Life  of  Homer," 
according  to  the  pseudo- Herodotus  (and 
a  similar  remark  applies  to  the  *'  Life  of 
Shakespere  "  according  to  Rowe),  than  the 
frequent  snatches  of  song  scattered  all 
through  it.  Yet  why  ?  If  Thucydides 
puts  into  his  history  speeches  which  most 
certainly  were  not  made,  why  should  not 
Herodotus  put  into  his  '*Life  of  Homer," 
and  Rowe  into  his  ''  Life  of  Shakespere," 
verses  which  at  least  quite  possibly,  and 
in  my  judgment  most  certainly,  were  Y 

And  when,  after  a  prosperous  voyage, 
they  arrived  at  Erythra^,  Homer  slept 
that  night  on  the  vessel,  but  next  day  he 
begged  of  the  sailors  to  give  him  a  guide 
to  the  city.  And  they  did  so.  And  on 
the  way  Homer,  when  he  found  Erythra^ 
rough  and  hilly, — to  an  ordinary  traveller 
a  matter  of  indifference,  but  to  him 
a  discomfort  and  a  weariness, — committed 
another  stanza  to  his  note-book,  com- 
plaining that  while  it  abounded  in  corn 
and  wine  to  others,  the  unevenness  of  the 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer.       59 

ground  made  him,  that  was  blind  by  the 
mysterious  dispensation  of  Providence, 
evermore  totter  and  stumble  like  a  drunken 
man.  And  when  he  arrived  at  the  city  he 
begged  of  the  Erythraeans  a  free  passage 
to  Chios.  And  one  of  the  merchants, 
with  whom  he  had  made  acquaintance  at 
Phocaea,  coming  up  and  saluting  him,  he 
begged  him  to  help  him  to  find  a  vessel 
in  order  that  he  might  cross  over  to 
Chios. 

But  from  the  harbour  there  was  no 
merchant  vessel  setting  sail  just  then,  so 
his  friend  conducted  the  blind  poet  to  the 
roadstead  where  the  fishermen's  boats  lay 
at  anchor.  And  there  he  fortunately  en- 
countered some  that  were  about  to  sail 
all  the  way  to  Chios.  To  these  his  friend 
stepped  forward,  and  entreated  them  to 
take  our  poet  on  board.  But  without 
deigning  one  word  in  reply,  the  sulky 
wretches  put  off  to  sea.  Whereupon 
Homer  made  up  another  stanza  as  fol- 
lows : — 

"  Oh,  sailors,  o'er  the  sea  that  fly, 
Of  Ate  void  of  awe. 
Dire  is  their  doom  who  thus  defy 
Jove's  hospitable  law." 


6o       The  Coynplete  Life  of  Hovter, 

Who  can  doubt  that  the  tale  of  the 
Cyclops  Polyphemus  is  the  poetical  em- 
bodiment of  those  godless  sons  of  Nep- 
tune,— the  one-eyed  {i.e.y  all  for  self), 
many-tongued  scum  of  Asia  Minor?  And 
it  fell  out  that  after  these  water-rats  had 
put  out  to  sea  they  were  compelled  by 
contrary  winds  to  run  back  again  to  the 
port  they  had  put  out  from.  And  there 
they  found  our  blind  poet  sitting,  Arion- 
like,  with  a  smile  on  his  gentle  lips  upon 
the  beach,  the  waves  splashing  all  about 
his  threadbare  garments,  and  hoary  hair, 
and  sightless  eyes.  And  having  learned 
that  they  had  been  compelled  to  put  back 
again,  he  thus  addressed  them:  '*You, 
my  hosts,  have  encountered  a  contrary 
wind,  by  the  mercy  of  Heaven,  whose 
laws  you  impiously  defied,  wherefore  even 
now  receive  me  on  board,  and  then  will 
ye  be  able  to  arrive  at  your  promised 
haven."  The  dullest  of  my  readers  can- 
not but  see  that  this  is  a  somewhat  fanci- 
fully-coloured version  of  an  incident  that 
doubtless  happened.  The  wind  doubtless 
was  contrary,  and  the  superstition  of  these 
simple  tars  may  well  have  attributed  it  to 
their  violation  of  the  sacred  lav/s  of  hos- 


T/ie  Complete  Life  of  Homer,      6i 

pitality, — doubly  sacred  in  the  case  of  this 
child  of  song, — this  most  sacred  of  all  the 
inspired  messengers  of  Jove. 

So  the  fishermen,  regretting  that  they 
had  not  received  him  before,  bade  him 
come  on  board.  And  then  putting  out 
again,  the  wind  became  favourable,  and 
they  arrived  safely  at  Chios.  The  story, 
reminding  us  as  it  does  of  Bacchus,  Arion, 
Jonah,  and  others,  has  no  doubt  a  mytho- 
logical flavour.  Still  the  matter  in  its 
broad  outlines  is  probable  enough.  There 
is  nothing  really  supernatural  here, — only 
chance  for  once  favoured  our  hapless  wan- 
derer. The  fishermen  now  having  got 
into  safe  harbour  applied  themselves  at 
once  to  the  labours  of  their  calling ;  but 
Homer  stayed  all  that  night  on  the  sea- 
shore, and  when  the  day  broke,  after 
much  blind  stumbling  and  wandering 
about,  arrived  at  the  spot  which  is  called 
"The  Pines,"  and  there,  quite  worn  out 
with  so  many  accumulated  hardships,  he 
rested  the  second  night  under  their 
shade : — 

"  Then  at  last  he  slept  soundly — forgot  all  his 
troubles."  • 

*  Odyss.,  XV.  345. 


62       The  Complete  Life  of  Homer. 

And  a  cool  breeze  springing  up  as  it 
drew  towards  morning,  the  fruit  being 
dead  ripe  (for  it  was  now  past  mid- 
summer), fell  down  upon  him  and  awoke 
him.  Whereupon  he  drew  out  his  note- 
book, and  jotted  down  the  following 
epigram  : — 

*'  Another  pine  bears  better  fruit  than  thou 
On  many-valley'd  Ida's  windy  brow, 
Or  rather  shall  when  martial  steel  to  gain 
The  bold  Kebrenians  undermine  the  plain." 

The  Cymaeans  were  at  this  juncture 
busy  making  preparations  to  found  Kebren 
in  the  Troad,  so  named  from  Kebren, 
whose  two'daughters,  H  esperia  and  CE  none, 
were  beloved  by  the  two  sons  of  Priam, 
-^sacus  and  Paris.  That  it  was  founded 
by  them  we  find  also  in  Harpocration. 
Ephorus,  he  tells  us,  confirms  our 
poet's  statement  on  the  authority  of 
Demetrius  of  Scepsis.  And  he  should 
have  known,  Scepsis  being  on  the  borders 
of  Kebren,  and  still  more  should  our  poet, 
having  just  come  from  Cyme,  and  having 
been  sojourning  at  Cenchreae  in  the  Troad 
so  long. 

The  above  effusion  is  a  poetical  curse 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer,       6 


upon  the  tree  which  had  destroyed  his 
repose,  reminding  us  very  much  of  Christ 
and  the  fig-tree.  He  wishes  the  miners 
had  it.  And  at  daybreak  our  blind  poet 
got  up  and  proceeded  to  a  spot  a  little  way 
off,  where  he  heard  the  goats  bleating  over 
their  morning  meal.  And  when  the  dogs 
barked  at  him,  he  shrieked  out  for  help. 
The  irreverent  reader  must  please  recollect 
that  he  was  blind  and  utterly  helpless,  and 
his  ashy-blue,  want-flaccid  flesh  showing 
through  his  rags,  he  afforded  a  piteous  prey 
to  those  savage  creatures.  And  when 
Glaucus  (for  that  was  the  name  of  the 
herdsman,  heard  him  shrieking)  with  the 
accursed  dogs  jumping  and  barking  all 
round  him,  he  ran  quickly  up  and  called 
back  the  dogs.  We  find  this  incident  also 
in  the  ^^  Odyssey"  (bk.  xiv.  11.29 — 38)  :~ 

"  But  when  the  dogs  beheld  him  sore  afraid, 

Yelling  like  wild  things  at  his  throat  they  flew ; 
But  straight,  with  pattering  feet,  unto  his  aid 
Eumaeus  ran,  and  as  at  them  he  threw 

A  shower  of  stones  reviled  the  accursed  train  ; 

Then  to  the  Prince  he  knew  not  thus  began  : — 
*  But  for  Heaven's  mercy  now  hadst    thou  been 
slain. 

And  cover'd  me  with  sore  disgrace,  old  man.' " 


64       The  Complete  Life  of  Homer, 

Thus  Homer  escaped  the  fate  of  the 
shepherd-boy  poet  Linus,  whom  his  own 
dogs,  Seirius  at  the  head  of  them,  raving 
mad  with  the  heat,  tore  in  pieces  (hence 
the  name  of  the  star  Canicula,  or  Procyon, 
and  the  days  it  dominates), — the  fate  the 
Psalmist  dreaded, —  the  fate  of  *' sad 
Electra's  poet."  And  because  the  star  still 
appears  when  the  power  of  the  Sun-god  is 
at  its  zenith,  the  Sun-god  also  was  some- 
times called  Seirius.  But  from  that  day 
the  beauty,  the  innocence,  and  the  untimely 
fate  of  the  victim  of  the  malignant  jealousy 
of  the  Sun-god, 

"  In  feast  and  in  dance  is  lamented  by  all : 
In  prologue  and  refrain  on  Linus  they  call." 

Linus  became  the  generic  name  for  a 
poet  of  the  piping  order.  Homer  intro- 
duces a  boy  singing  a  linus,  or  song  of  woe. 
^Eschylus  used  the  expression  Woe-Linus  ! 
Woe-Linus!  as  a  mournful  interjection. 
Pindar  even  speaks  of  a  woelinous  linus. 
And  L.  E.  L.  writes  the  most  charming  of 
all  her  poems  upon  "  The  happy  shepherd 
boy."  And  even  so  in  my  own  *'  Reign  of 
Love,"  the  happy  lads  of  Raby,  in  com- 
memoration of  their  Angel-Prince  Jimmy, 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer,      65 

speak  of  something  altogether  delightful  as 
"  A  Jimmy,"  and  -  Jimmyish,"  and  of  going 
out  on  the  spree  as  **  Jimmying." 

And  he  was  utterly  astonished  that  he 
(Homer),  blind  as  he  was,  should  come 
alone  to  so  wild  a  spot,  and  could  not  con- 
ceive what  he  wanted,  or  what  made  him 
act  so.     So  he  came  up  to  him,  and  asked 
who  he  was,  and  why  he  had  come  to  a 
place  with  not  a  house  in  it  besides  his  own 
(Glaucus's),  and  a  locality  without  a  high- 
road,  or  carriage-road,   or  foot-path  even, 
and  what  on  earth    he   wanted.      Stupid 
iellow,  could  he  not  see  that  our  poor  poet 
was    blind,    and    had    stumbled    thither. 
Heaven-directed,  he    knew  not  why,  any- 
more than  his  questioner  'i     However,  the 
poor  bewildered  wanderer  answered  him 
to  the  best  of  his  ability,  and  aroused  the 
dull,  honest  goat-herd  to  life  by  the  tale  of 
all  his  undeserved  misfortunes  :  so  taking 
him  by  the  hand  to  his  hut,  and  lighting  a 
fire,  Glaucus  cooked  the  best  dinner  he 
could,  and  set  it    before  his  angel-guest. 
But    as    the    dogs   had    nothing    to    eat 
themselves,  and  kept  on  barking  at  him 
and  his  entertainer  while  they  sat  at  meat, 
Homer,  afraid  of  their  biting  him  in  his 


66       The  Complete  Life  of  Horner. 

present  half-naked  state,  begged  him  to 
give  them  something  in  another  impromptu, 
which,  though  nothing  to  what  he  could  do 
when  he  tried,  astonished  that  good  simple 
rustic's  weak  mind,  as  the  saying  is.  And 
as  they  sat  at  meat  they  entered  into  con- 
versation, and  when  Homer  told  Glaucus 
all  about  his  wanderings  by  sea  and  land, 
and  the  cities  he  had  visited,  he  was  quite 
astonished  to  hear  him,  as,  goggle-eyed 
and  open-mouthed,  he  sat  and  listened  till 

bed-time. 

Even  as  he  tells  us,  under  his  pseudo- 
nym in  the  "  Odyssey  "  : — 

"  Three  days  and  three  nights  at  my  hearth  he  did  sit, 
For  to  me  first  he  came  when  his  ship  he  did  quit. 
And  as  on  the  minstrel  his  Usteners  gaze, 
AVhen  he  thrills  their  rapt  ears  with  his  heaven- 
taught  lays, 
And  hang  on  his  sweet  lips  whate'er  he  recites, 
E'en  so  did  he  charm  me  those  three  days  and 
nights."  * 

Next  day  our  poet  made  as  if  he  would 
resume  his  wanderings,  and  begged  Glaucus 
to  let  him  have  a  boy  to  guide  him  to  town, 
there  to  beg  his  bread  ;  but  Glaucus  said, 

*  Odyss.,  xvii.  515-52. 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer,      6; 

•'  No,  he  should  stay  with  him  if  his  master 
would  allow  it,"  and  went  off  to  his  master 
to  tell  him  all  about  Homer,  Homer 
showermg  blessings  upon  him  as  he  went 
for  thus  putting  an  end  to  his  weary 
wanderings  : — 

"  May  Jove  and  all  the  other  Gods,  kind  stranger 
give  to  thee  ^    ' 

All  thy  life  long  thy  heart's  desire  for  thus  receiving 
me.    *  ^ 

But  when  Glaucus  got  to  Bolissus,  and 
told   his  master  what    he    had    done,   he 
laughed  at  him,  and    pronounced    him  a 
simpleton   for  receiving  and   entertaining 
blind     people.       Nevertheless,    he     bade 
Glaucus  bring  the  stranger  to  see  him.     So 
havmg  returned  to  Homer,  Glaucus  told 
him  of  the  interview  he  had  just  had  with 
his  ''  boss,"  and  advised  him  to  call  on  him 
as    requested.     And,  Homer    consentino- 
Glaucus  took  him  to  his  ''  boss."     And  the 
Chian  conversing  with  Homer  found  him  a 
skilled  and   learned   man,  and  persuaded 
him  to  stay  with  him,  and  take  charge  of 
the  education  of  his  boys  ;    for  the  Chian 
had  sons  now  old  enough  to  go  to  school. 

*  Odyss.,  xiv.  53,  54. 

F    2 


68       The  Complete  Life  of  Homer. 

These,  therefore,  he  placed  under  our 
poet's  care  to  educate.  And  while  thus 
employed  he  wrote  ''The  Apes,"  and 
"  The  Batde  between  the  Frogs  and  the 
Mice,"  "  The  Seven  Shearings."  and  *'  The 
Fieldfares,"  and  his  other  comic  works,  so 
that  he  became  celebrated  throughout  the 
city  of  Bolissus  for  his  poetry.  And  as  soon 
as  Thestorides  heard  that  he  was  there, 
he  sailed  away  from  Chios.  Blind,  stone 
blind  as  our  poet  was,  the  villain  durst  not 
face  him.     Even  as  Southey  says  :  — 

*'  So  insupportably  dreadful. 
Soon  or  late,  it  is  to  behold  the  face  of  the  injured." 

And  as  time  went  on,  our  blind^  poet 
entreated  the  Chian  to  give  him  a  guide  to 

Chios.     And  on  his  complying .      But 

ho!  my  good  friend,  Herodotus,  ho!  you 
are  misleading  your  readers  a  litde  here. 
Turn  we  here  to  the  pages  of  Homer  him- 
self, and  let  us  see  what  he  has  to  say. 
Telemachus  addresses  the  swineherd  as 
follows  : — 

Telemachus. 

«'  Now  I  am  off,  with  this  one  last  request : 
Lead  to  the  city  our  unhappy  guest, 


The  Complete  Life  of  Hoiner.      69 

To  beg  of  those  whose  hearts  the  Gods  incline 

To  help  the  poor,  his  crust  and  pint*  of  wine. 

But  all  that  come  /cannot  entertain, 

However  I  compassionate  their  pain. 

I  love  plain-speaking,  so,  good-by,  my  friend, 

Your  case,  howe'er  you  frown,  you  will  not  mend." 

Ulysses. 

"  Oh,  sir,  indeed,  I  would  not  be  one  day 
Longer  than  I  am  wanted  in  your  way. 
To  crave  what  nature  needs,  from  door  to  door. 
Better  is  town  than  country  for  the  poor. 
To  bide  with  cattle  I  am  now  too  old, 
And  do  like  them  whatever  I  am  told. 
But  go  thou  on  before  ;  he  you  provide, 
This  honest  fellow  here,  my  steps  shall  guide ; 
But  let  me  have  a  warm  first  by  the  fire. 
For,  as  you  see,  full  thin  is  my  attire, 
Lest  with  its  bite  the  frost  of  morning  quell  me, 
For  it  is  far  from  here  to  town,  they  tell  me."  f 

We  have  a  hundred  signs  that  our  poet 
had  a  hard  time  of  it  at  Bolissus,— his 
muse  melancholy,  slow,  dull,  and  bitter;  the 
boys,  his  pupils,  of  whom  we  have  not  one 
word   good  or    bad,    unlike  all    his  other 

*  A  pint  seems  a  good  deal,  but  the  unlearned 
reader  must  know  that  the  ancients  watered  their 
wme,  and  the  wine  of  the  beggar-man  was,  doubtless, 
nme-tenths  water. 

t  Odyss.,  xvii.  6-25. 


JO       The  Complete  Life  of  Homer. 

pupils,  utterly  unappreciative  young  churls  ; 
lastly,  to  quote  the  sweet  story  of  Edwin 
and  Emma  :  — 

"  The  father,  too,  a  sordid  man. 
Who  love  nor  pity  knew. 
Dull  and  unfeeling  as  the  clod 
From  whence  his  riches  grew," 

as  is  patent  from  what  has  gone  before, 
having  picked  the  brains  of  the  finest  in- 
tellect of  all  times,  as  long  as  suited  his  con- 
venience, and,  under  the  pretence  of  charity, 
having  remunerated  him  with  the  cast-off 
raiment  of  his  grooms,  the  scraps  the  very 
dogs  refused,  and  a  stable  loft  one  story 
above  the  cattle,  fretting  at  the  immeasur- 
able intellectual  and  moral  superiority  of 
one  whom,  from  a  social  point  of  view,  he 
so  immeasurably  looked  down  upon.  And 
here  we  see  the  unsatisfactory  end.  The 
old  clown  dismisses  Homer  from  his 
employ,  and  Homer  is  only  too  glad  to  go. 
So  "  Blind  Melesigenes  "  is  led  by  the  kind 
and  pitying  Glaucus  into  the  city,  stam- 
mering out  well-meant  apologies  to  him  on 
the  way,  as  he  led  our  poor  blind  poet  by 
the  hand.  Or,  to  draw  once  more  from  the 
fountain  head  : — 


The  Co7nplete  Life  of  Homer.      71 

•'  And  as  divine  Ulysses  and  the  clown 
Sped  from  the  farmyard,  on  their  way  to  town. 
Thus  spoke  the  latter  :  *  Since  you  wish  to  go 
With  me  to-day,  and  my  lord  wills  it  so. 
Though  fain  would   I  have  kept  you,  friend,  at 

home, 
I  may  not  cross  his  will  and  thine  :  so  come. 
Despatch  !  for  it  grows  late,  and  you  grow  old. 
And  hereabouts  the  evenings  are  cold.'  * 


Ulysses  assents,  but  asks  for  a  staff,  as 
the  road,  he  is  told,  is  slippery. 

All  this  is  merely  a  poetical  rendering  of 
one  of  the  most  interesting  pages  in  our  poet's 
life,  the  poem  here  reminding  one  of  some 
ancient  vellum,  on  which  some  devotional 
work  of  one  of  the  fathers  is  written,  but 
under  that  the  scholar  detects  some  precious 
relic  of  Hellenic  or  Roman  literature. 
Underneath  a  not  very  interesting,  or  even 
probable,  passage  in  the  adventures  of 
Ulysses,  we  detect  an  invaluable  passage 
of  our  poet's  diary,  ingeniously  done  into 
hexameters. 

From  this  time  the  MoM  traditions 
cease,  and  what  we  have,  till  Homer  left 
Chios,  is,  even  where  Herodotus  himself  is 
our  informant,  more  or  less  unreliable. 
Bolissus,  it  is  important  to  note,  was  an 


72       The  Complete  Life  of  Homer, 

^oHan  city.*  Thucydides  calls  it  Bo- 
liscusf  or  Littlefall,  because  it  was  a  petty 
fishing  station  upon  a  headland.  But 
Chios  was  intensely  Ionian.  In  passing, 
therefore,  from  Bolissus  to  Chios,  our  poet 
passes  out  of  the  sphere  of  /Eolic  tradition. 

And,  after  a  time,  he  having  hired  a 
schoolroom,  taught  the  gentry  of  the  place 
his  verses ;  and  the  Chians  judged  him  a 
marvellously  skilful  lecturer,  and  many 
admiring  listeners  flocked  round  him  daily. 

And  now,  at  last,  finding  himself  in  a 
position  to  do  so,  he  married  a  wife,  and 
had  two  daughters  by  her.  And  his  wife's 
name  was  Eurydice,{  and  of  his  daughters 
one  died  unmarried,  and  the  other,  Arsi- 
phone,  he  gave  in  marriage  to  a  Chian,§ 
the  celebrated  Creophylus.  Suidas,  in- 
deed, tells  us  that  he  married  Arsiphone, 
the  daughter  of  Gnotor,  of  Cyme,  and  had 
by  her  two  sons,  whose  names  were  Eury- 
phon  and  Theolaus,  and  a  daughter  who 
married  Stasinus,  the  Cyprian.  But  Suidas 
has  evidently  confounded  our  poet  with  the 

*  Stephanus  Byzantius,  art.  **  Bolissus." 
t  Book  viii. 

\  Tzetzes,  *'  Last  History  of  last  Chiliad." 
§  Westermann's  '*  Lives,"  p.  13. 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer. 


/   v> 


pseudo-Homer,  of  whom  more  by-and-by. 
For(i)  the  true  Homer  could  not  have 
married  a  daughter  of  the  city  that  had 
cast  him  out,  and  that  he  had  cursed  with 
perpetual  intellectual  sterility,  for  then 
would  his  curse  have  fallen  on  his  own 
head.  (2)  This  Stasinus  did  not  live  till 
very  long  afterwards.  (3)  The  name 
Euryphon  is  the  same  as  that  of  the 
pseudo-Homers  son,  in  the  stemma which 
traces  him  to  Terpander,  and  suspiciously 
like  his  father  Euphron's  also. 

But  the  real  facts  are  these.  His 
daughter  Arsiphone  married  Creophylus 
the  Elder,  and  had  by  him  Terpander,  the 
Phocaean,  whose  son  or  brother,  I  know 
not  which,  was  Gnotor,  of  Cyme,  and  he 
had  a  daughter  named  Arsiphone.  I  have 
observed  elsewhere  that  it  is  a  well-known 
rule  for  names  to  recur  in  alternate  gene- 
rations. This  Arsiphone  the  pseudo- 
Homer,  married,  and  had  by  her  two  sons, 
as  Suidas  says,  Theolaus  and  Euryphon! 
Thus,  Homer  the  Younger's  wife  was  di- 
rectly descended  from  Homer  the  Great, 
which  may  have  additionally  interested 
him  in  our  poet's  works,  and  have  given 
him  additional  facilities  for  collecting  them. 


74       The  Coynplcte  Life  of  Homer, 

And  in  his  works  he  returned  the  favours 
he  had  received,  as  Ariosto  says,  in  the 
only  coin  he  had,  to  Mentor,  of  Ithaca,  his 
faithful  friend,  and  Mentes,  his  skipper, 
and  Tychius,  the  kind-hearted  shoemaker, 
of  Neonteichos,  and  Phemius,  his  good, 
indulgent  schoolmaster  and  second  father, 
by  conspicuous  mentions  in  his  poems. 

But  if  Phemius  was  the  son  of  Pronapus, 
or  Pornapus,  why  does  not  our  poet  call 
him  Pornapides  ?  Because  Parnops,  or 
Pornops,  signifies,  in  Greek,  a  kind  of 
locust  (Ar.  Ach.,  150),  an  animal 
especially  hateful  to  our  poet's  tutelary 
divinity.  Since,  therefore,  to  call  Phemius 
the  son  of  a  locust  would  have  been,  to  say 
the  least  of  it,  uncouth,  uncanny,  and  of 
evil  omen,  he  invents  a  significant  Bun- 
yanesque  patronymic,  and  calls  him  the  son 
of  Please-all. 

And  now  the  fame  of  our  poet  was 
noised  abroad  throughout  all  Ionia,  and 
reached  already  over  the  iEgean  to  the 
Mother  Country.  And  many  flocking 
round  him  daily,  those  that  interviewed 
him  all  agreed  in  strongly  advising  him  to 
pay  a  visit  to  the  venerable  fatherland  of 
his  ancestors  ;  and  he  listened  eagerly  to 


The  Complete  Life  of  Home7\      75 
their  words,  and  was  very  anxious  to  be 


TOne. 


But  considering  that  he  had  said  many 
fine  things  of  Argos,  but  of  Athens 
nothmg,  he  set  to  work  interpolating  a 
few  such  verses  as  might  prove  acceptable 
there,  e.g.  : — 

''The  people  of  high-soul'd  Erechtheus, 
The  child  of  the  gaping  sod. 
The  daughter  of  Jove,  Athene, 
Was  nurse  to  the  demi-god."  * 

And,  again, — 

"  Them  led  the  son  of  Peleus 
Menestheus  to  the  field, 
No  living  mortal  was  his  peer, 
To  marshal  horse  and  shield,  f 

And  Ajax  led  from  Salamis 
Twelve  ships,  that  lined  the  bay 

Where  the  Athenian  squadrons 
Were  posted  for  the  fray/'  J 

And,  lastly, — 


*'  And  then  to  Marathon  she  came 

And  Athens'  dances  wide. 

And  the  palace  of  Erechtheus, 

Her  presence  glorified."  § 


*  Iliad,  ii.  547, 
t  lb.,  ii.  557. 


t  Iliad,  ii.  352. 
§  Odyss.,  vii.  80. 


76      The  Complete  Life  of  Homer. 

And  having  interpolated  the  above  lines 
in  his  two  immortal  works,  he  proceeded 
to  make  all  the  necessary  preparations  for 
his  projected  visit  to  Hellas. 

He  had  already,  as  *  we  have  seen, 
given  one  of  his  daughters  in  marriage  to 
his  most  intimate  friend,  Creophylus. 
The  other,  I  presume,  was  dead  ;  but  what 
had  become  of  our  /Eneas's  Creusa  I 
cannot  say.  From  his  anxiety,  not  merely 
for  a  temporary  visit  to  the  Mother 
Country,  but  for,  apparently,  a  protracted 
stay,  from  which  he  might  never  return, 
and  also  from  the  lanoruacre  of  the  other 
biographers,  we  naturally  infer  that  Homer 
was  now  once  more  a  homeless  wanderer. 
But  we  kfiow  positively  nothing. 

1  conjecture,  however,  that  as  Homer, 
when  he  came  to  Chios,  was,  like  Ulysses 
when  he  came  to  Ithaca,  *' prematurely 
elderly,"  he  must  have  been  some  fifty 
years  old  when  he  married,  and  as  he  died 
at  about  seventy,  it  follows  that  he  must 
have  left  Chios  as  soon  as  possible  after  he 
had  disposed  of  his  daughter,  and  left  her, 
and  presumably  her  mother,  safely  housed 
with  his  son-in-law. 

Lesches  informs  us,  that    having  com- 


The  CoDiplete  Life  of  Home7\      77 

posed  his  '*  Margites,"  he  went  round  the 
Greek  cities  singing  it.  This  is,  of  course, 
impossible.  Lesches  confounds  him  here 
with  the  pseudo- Homer,  even  as  Suidas 
does.  But  the  account  of  the  Colophonians 
that  he  wrote  it  as  a  young  man,  when  he 
first  fell  blind,  is  also  contradicted  by  the 
commencement  of  the  poem, — 

"  An  old  man  came  to  Colophon  ; " 

which  shows  that  it  was,  at  least  in  its 
present  form,  the  production  of  his  old  age; 
but  of  this  more  when  we  come  to  the  dis- 
cussion of  his  works.  In  sketching  the 
first  part  of  Homer's  last  journey  from 
Chios  to  los,  we  have  the  difficult  task 
of  extracting  the  honey  of  truth  from  more 
than  one  nettle  of  error.  One  author,* 
quoted  by  Allatius,!  tells  us  that  Homer, 
on  his  way  from  Smyrna  chanced  to 
arrive  at  Chios.  Of  course  this  is  every 
way  absurd,  both  the  ''chanced"  and  the 
"Chios,"  and  is  in  contradiction  to  the 
unanimous  account  of  all  antiquity.  But 
if  we  accept   Chios,    as  a  hasty   copyist's 

*  Wolfgangus  Lazius,  *'  Greek  History,"  bk.  ii. 
t  "  De  Patria  Homeri,"  p.  177. 


^8       The  Complete  Life  of  Homer, 

blunder  for  los,  we  obtain  the  interestin^r 
fact  that  Homer  now  saw,  for  the  last 
time,  his  native  city,  and  wrote  that  beauti- 
ful hymn  to  Diana,  that  stands  the  ninth 
in  the  list.  In  going  by  land  from  Chios, 
to  pay  a  visit  to  the  kindred  of  his 
daughter's  newly-married  husband  at 
Samos,  he  would  naturally  pass  through 
Smyrna,  and  while  grey  hairs  would  soften 
his  resentment  (''  Lenit  albescens  animos 
capillus  ")  for  the  cruel  neglect  of  bygone 
years,  the  coming  shadow  of  his  own  grave 
would  lead  him  for  the  last  time  to  plant 
flowers  on  that  of  his  poor,  ill-fated  mother,, 
and  water  them  with  the  rain  of  filial  piety. 
Thence  he  dragged  his  aged  steps  to 
Colophon.  And  there,  in  answer  to  the 
impious  fools  that  jeered  at  the  Margites, 
as  they  nicknamed  him,  whose  improvi- 
dence had  left  him  so  poorly  provided  for 
in  his  old  age,  like  Scott's  minstrel  with 
his — 

'*  Breathes  there  a  man  with  soul  so  dead,'' 

he  burst  forth  into  that  impassioned  de- 
fence of  his  art,  of  which  we  have  now, 
alas  !  only  a  few  lines  left.  Singing  this 
last  note  of  triumph,  he  passed  on  from  city 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer,      79 

to  city  (and  erroneous  as  Lesches's  ''Agon" 
is,  there  is  thus  much  truth  in  it),  till  he 
arrived    at    Samos.     Now,  the  people  of 
Samos   chanced  at  that  time  to  be  cele- 
brating the  Apaturia  in  honour  of  Melan- 
thus,  the  royal  ancestor  of  the  founder  of 
their   city.       And    one   of  the    Samians, 
perceiving  that  Homer  had  arrived,  for  he 
knew  him  by  sight,  having  seen  him  before 
at  Chios,  went  to  his  fellow-clansmen,  and 
told  them,  and  spoke  in  high  terms  of  com- 
mendation of  the  new  comer.      And   his 
fellow-clansmen   bade    him  introduce  our 
poet ;  so    returning  to   the   porch,    where 
Homer  was  sitting,  "Friend/'  he  said  to 
him  with  a  smile  and  a  bow,  "  the  people 
of  our  clan  invite  you  to  keep  the  festival 
with  them.     And  Homer  agreed  to  do  so, 
and  went  off  straightway    with    his   new 
friend.     And  on  the  way  he  encountered 
some  women  who  were  sacrificing,  at  the 
meeting  of  three  roads,   to  Kourotrophos, 
— doubriess,  the  diva  triformis,  the  Diana 
Trivia  of  ancient  Rome,  the  Goddess  that 
presides  over  the  births,  deaths,  and  mar- 
riages  of  a  modern  newspaper;— and  she 
that  acted  as  priestess,    being  unable  to 
endure   the    sightless  aspect  of  our  poor 


8o      The  Complete  Life  of  Homer, 

blind  poet,  said  to  him,  ''  Away  from  the 
sacrifice,  man  ;  away,  I  say  ;  we  cannot  pro- 
ceed while  you  are  here."  And  when 
Homer  learned  who  it  was  that  thus  drove 
him  from  her  presence,  as  a  thing  of  ill- 
omen,  he  made  an  impromptu,  playfully 
ridiculing  all  such  preposterous  matrons  of 
Ephesus ;  and  when  he  arrived  at  the 
house  where  the  members  of  the  clan  were 
feasting,  he  stood  outside  on  the  threshold 
and  made  another  impromptu  : — 

"  Sons  are  their  father's  crown,"  &c. 

And  then  entering  in,  he  sat  down  and 
feasted  with  the  clansmen,  and  they  were 
filled  with  awe  at  the  wondrous  manifesta- 
tions of  his  genius  with  which  he  favoured 
them  all  that  evening.  And  as  he  went 
away  next  day  some  potters,*  as  they  were 
lighting  their  fire,  saw  him  on  the  road, 
and  having  heard  what  a  wonderfully  fine 
poet  he  was,  called  out  to  him,  and  begged 
him  to  sing  something  for  them,  and  they 
would  give  him  the  earthen  vessel  they 
w^ere  now  going  to  bake,  or  whatever  else 

*  Samos  abounded  in  potter's  clay,  and  that  of 
two  distinct  kinds.— Pliny,  H.  N.,  35-53. 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer,      81 

he  preferred  that  they  had  by  them. 
Whereupon  he  sang  them  the  song  which 
goes  by  the  name  of  ''The  Furnace." 
And  being  detained  by  bad  weather  at 
Samos,  he  went  on  the  first  of  every 
month  to  the  houses  of  the  well-to-do, 
and  earned  a  trifle  by  singing  outside 
their  doors.  And  the  boys  of  the  place 
came  with  him,  two  of  them  holding  each 
a  hand,  and  the  rest  running  on  before 
and  behind.  The  song  was  much  what 
such  songs  are,  even  to  this  day  : — 

*'  Heaven  give  you  plenty,  wealth,  and  joy, 
Long  life,  and  many  a  sturdy  boy  ! 
But,  oh,  have  pity  on  the  poor, 
That  chirp  like  swallows  at  your  door. 
But,  if  you  won't  we  will  away, 
For  we  are  not  come  here  to  stay 
And  shiver  on  the  step  all  day." 

The  song  in  the  original  Greek  is  much 
longer,  and  is  there  called  an  Eiresione. 
It  is  said  to  have  been  sung  by  the  lads  of 
Samos  for  many  years  after.  The  Eire- 
sione, from  which  the  song  still  extant 
derives  its  name,  was  a  harvest  wreath  of 
olive  or  laurel  wound  round  with  wool, 
and  adorned  with  all  the  fruits  of  the 
season,     borne    about    by    boys    at    the 

G 


82       The  Complete  Life  of  Homer, 

• 

Tyanepsia,  or  bean-feast,  which,  we  are 
told,  was  originally  instituted  by  Theseus. 
Then,  when  each  troop  of  laughing  boys 
had  taken  its  stand  before  a  house,  they 
danced  and  sang  outside,  while  the  people 
inside  made  oblations  to  the  sun  and  ''the 
rosy-bosomed  hours/'  Then  the  boys 
rang  the  bell  and  shouted  at  the  top  of 
their  sweet  young  voices,  and  the  people 
came  out  and  gave  them  coppers. 

As  regards  the  fruit,  I  presume  it  was 
disposed  of  just  as  it  is  in  the  harvest 
celebrations,  so  much  in  vogue  at  the 
present  day.  And  hence  any  begging- 
song  was  called  an  Eiresione.  And  at  the 
commencement  of  spring  Homer  set  sail 
from  Samos  for  Athens. 

So  here  ends  the  present  chapter ;  but 
first  let  us  take  one  last  glance  at  Asiatic 
Greece  ere  leaving  it  Avith  our  poet  for 
ever;  and  especially  at  Smyrna,  his  un- 
grateful and  unnatural  mother-city. 

In  the  tenth  year  of  Thersippus,  Archon 
of  Athens,  and  the  fourth  of  Doristhus, 
king  of  Sparta,  or  a  little  later,  that  is  when 
Homer  was  about  thirty  years  old,  Samos 
was  built  and  Smyrna  enlarged  in  the 
manner   of  a    city    ("  Samos    condita   et 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer.      83 

Smyrna  in  urbis  modum  ampliata  ")  *  by 
the  Athenians.     Samos  had  not,  therefore, 
been  built   much   more  than   forty  years, 
and  was  at  this  time  most  devotedly  loyal 
to  the  parent  state  that  had  so  recently 
founded  her.     And  Homer,  by  taking  the 
active  part  he  did  in  the  Apaturia  and  the 
Pyanepsia,    intensely    patriotic    feasts    of 
colonial    loyalists   (see   Suidas  for    both), 
had  virtually  taken  the  oaths  of  allegiance 
to  the  city  for  which  he  was  now  bound  ; 
even  as  by  the  modifications  he  had  re- 
cently introduced  into  his  poems,  he  had 
done  all  in  his  power  to  prove  himself  a 
true  Ionic  Greek.     ''  What  !  "  methinks  I 
hear  the  venerable  author  of  ''  Homeric 
Studies  "  thundering,    **  you  call  yourself 
an  orthodox    Homerologist,  and  yet  you 
dare  most  blasphemously  to  insinuate  that 
our   great    poet   was    a    mean,  sneaking, 
curry-favouring  traitor  ! "     Apollo  forbid  ! 
But  I   think  that  at  this  time  Smyrna  was 
no  longer  yEolid.     It  had  been  taken  by 
the  Amazono-Colophonians.     A  few  years 
passed  on  (probably  a  very  few,  as  Mim- 
nermus    represents    the    two    events    as 

*  Eusebius,  "  Chronicon,"  vol.  ii.  p.  153. 

G  2 


84       The  Complete  Life  of  Homer. 

one),    when   the    Amazono-Colophonians 
of  Smyrna  and  the  Athenio-Amazonians 
of   Ephesus   discovered   that    they   were 
strictly  and  precisely  one,  both  on  their 
Pylian   and  their    Amazonian    side.      So 
Smyrna,  largely  augmented  by  a  supply 
of  fresh  blood  drawn  from  Attica,  became 
an    Ionic  city  about  980  B.C.     And  why 
should   Homer  object  ?     His  one  tie    to 
Smyrna  was  his  mother.     And  she  was  a 
Kretheid  ;  that  is,  of  the  self-same,  blood, 
and  a  far-off  cousin    of   the   Codridee  of 
Ephesus.      And  his    father,     Demagoras 
(whose  memory  he  loved  with  all  a  woman's 
sweet  unreasoning  piety),  was  a  Kretheid 
on  the  dearest  side,  the  mother's,  and  his 
nurse  and  second  mother,  Euryclea,  was  a 
Kretheid  wholly.     True,  the   Thessalian 
element   at  Smyrna  was   dissatisfied,  and 
Homer,  beyond   all    dispute,    had    Thes- 
salian blood  in   him  ;  but   with  the   pro- 
phetic eye  of  a  true  prophet  he  foresaw  long 
beforehand  the  fatal  effects  of  the  disunion 
of  cognate  races:  so  he  wrote  his  immortal 
'41iad"  with  this  for  the  moral  of  it,  having 
a  general  application,  indeed,  to  the  whole 
Hellenic  race,  but  an  especial  one  to  the 
Thessalian  Smyrniotes.   But,  please,  reader, 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer,      85 

particularly  to  observe  that  the  Amazonian 
barbarians  who  had  outraged  him  in  his 
childhood  exiled  him  in  his  early  man- 
hood, denied  him  bread  in  his  blindness, 
and  contaminated  the  pure  Hellenic  blood 
of  his  townsmen  with  a  vile  Semitic  ele- 
ment, he  hated  bitterly  even  to  his  very 
last  breath.  **  But  what  wretched  stuff 
all  this  is  about  the  Amazonians !  As 
Betsy  Prigg  might  say,  '  There  never  was 
no  such  persons.' "  Excuse  me,  gentle 
reader,  there  were.  With  a  large  admix- 
ture of  worthless  rubbish,  what  we  read 
in  the  classics  expresses  the  veritable 
realisation  of  a  great  social  truth.  A 
monogamous  woman  makes  a  better 
monarch  in  every  way  than  a  polygamous 
man ;  for  the  woman  is  a  woman,  but  the 
man  is  not  a  man,  but  a  wretched  creature 
utterly  enfeebled  in  mind  and  body  by  the 
habitual  violation  of  the  sacred  laws  of 
nature.  Hence,  because  of  the  utter  dis- 
soluteness of  life  too  commonly  seen  in 
princes,  the  splendour  that  so  astonishes 
the  less  reflecting  of  our  sex  in  the  reign 
of  a  Semiramis,  a  Zenobia,  an  Elizabeth, 
and  even  a  Catharine  H .  of  Russia ; 
for    though    immoral    for    a    woman,     i 


86       The  Complete  Life  of  Homer, 

do  not  imagine  she  was  immoral  to  a 
debilitating  extent,  as  so  many  princes 
are.  And  hence,  too,  the  Amazons 
astonished  mankind  for  several  genera- 
tions by  a  brilliant  succession  of  female 
sovereiofns. 

But  to  return  to  Smyrna.  Well  might 
Fortune  (Tyche)  be  its  principal  divinity, 
for  never  did  city,  experience  such  vicis- 
situdes. Three  centuries  and  more  after 
Homer  shed  his  last  tears  beside  his 
mother's  grave,  Sadyattes  well  nigh  de- 
stroyed it,  but  it  revived  again,  and  was 
once  more  a  beautiful  city  in  the  time  of 
Pindar,  a  century  and  a  half  later.  But 
once  more  it  sank  into  pitiable  decay  till 
Antigonus  rebuilt  it  on  a  different  site,  in 
accordance,  it  would  seem,  with  the  ex- 
press wish  of  Alexander,  only  prevented 
from  being  carried  into  execution  by  his 
premature  death.  This  happened  about 
320  B.C.  Lysimachus  *  enlarged  and  beau- 
tified it  some  years  later.  Tyche  was 
again  propitious.  The  city  became  one 
of  the  greatest  and  most  prosperous  in 
the  world.  But  some  two  centuries  and 
three  quarters  afterwards,  Tyche  veered 

*  Aristeides. 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer.       87 

round  once  more.  Dolabella  took  it  and 
destroyed  it  in  the  Civil  Wars  43  b.c. 
However,  the  fickle  goddess  soon  re- 
covered her  temper.  The  traitorous  re- 
negade perished,  and  Homer's  native  city 
recovered  its  pristine  splendour.  It  was 
one  of  the  vSeven  Churches,  and  the  scene 
of  the  martyrdom  of  Poly  carp.  In  the 
years  171- 180  a  series  of  earthquakes,  to 
which  the  city  was  always  much  exposed, 
reduced  it  almost  to  ruins,  but  it  was 
restored  by  the  Emperor  Marcus  Anto- 
ninus. In  the  successive  wars  under  the 
Eastern  Empire  it  was  frequently  much 
injured,  but  always  recovered  ;  and  under 
the  Turks  it  has  survived  repeated  attacks 
of  earthquake,  fire,  and  plague,  and  still 
remains  the  greatest  commercial  city  of 
the  Levant.  It  has  a  population  of  about 
160,000,  is  by  far  the  most  important  port 
of  Asiatic  Turkey,  and  exports  immense 
quantities  of  almonds,  figs,  raisins,  and 
other  dried  fruits. 


P.S. — I  am  not  quite  satisfied  with  my 
putting  of  the  incident  recorded  on  pp. 
59-61.     Far  fewer  events  are  the  result  of 


88       The  Complete  Life  of  Homer, 

blind  chance  than  we  are  apt  to  think,  and 
there  is  here  no  chance  whatever.  The 
fishermen  were  in  a  hurry,  foreseeing  an 
approaching  squall,  and  the  squall  coming 
on  before  they  had  reached  "their  desired 
haven,"  they  had  to  put  back  again.  But 
Herodotus,  like  a  true  Greek,  in  his  love 
of  the  supernatural,  somewhat  misrepre- 
sents the  incident. 


CHAPTER   III. 


HIS    SICKNESS,    DEATH,    AND    BURIAL. 

Ax\i)  having  set  sail  from  Samos  with 
certain  natives  of  the  place,  he  was  carried 
to  los,  and  put  up  for  the  night,  not  in  the 
city,  but  off  the  shore.  His  funds  were  so 
low  that  he  could  not  afford  the  charges 
of  even  the  dingiest  tavern,  but  slept  on 
board  the  vessel  for  nothing,  or  some 
merely  nominal  sum.  And  here,  through 
poorness  of  food  and  anxiety  of  mind  on 
account  of  his  penniless  condition,  and  the 
hardships  and  privations  and  exposure  he 
had  gone  through,  and  advancing  years 
and  complete  wearing  out  of  the  system, 
our  poor  blind  poet  began  to  be  seriously 
indisposed.  So,  unable  any  longer,  I 
suppose,  to  endure  the  rocking  and  smell 
of  the  vessel,  he  got  out  and  slept  for  the 


90       The  Complete  Life  of  Homer, 

few  remaining  nights  of  his  forlorn,  suffer- 
ing life  on  the  beach,  in  a  state  of  the  most 
pitiable,  utter  helplessness.    And  the  crew 
anchoring  off  los  for  several  days,  in  con- 
sequence of  contrary  winds  and  stress  of 
weather,    every    day    people    came    down 
from  the  city  to  go  and  be  taught  by  our 
dying  sage ;  and  as  they  listened  with  ear 
close  to  catch  his  fast-failing  accents,  they 
were  filled  with  amazement  at  the  stores 
of  thought,  fancy,  and  learning  of  all  sorts 
that  he  had  amassed.     And  as  the  sailors 
and    certain  of  the  people   from   the  city 
were   sitting  by   Homer,   there  sailed  by 
the  spot  certain  fisher-lads,  who,  landing 
from  their  boat,    came    up  to   them    and 
spoke  as  follows  : — "  Here,  strangers,  we 
lads  have  something  to  say  to  you.     Come, 
listen,  pray,  and  see   if  you   can  make  it 
out."      And  one   of  those   present   bade 
them  say  on.     And  the    fisher-lads  said, 
**\Vhat  we  caught  we  have  left  behind, 
but    what  we    could    not   catch  we    have 
brought  with  us."     Bar  the   riddle  of  the 
Sphynx,   this  is  remarkable  as  being  the 
very    oldest    riddle    in    the    world.      The 
taste  of  the  most  self-satisfied  of  all  the 
centuries,    with    which   wisdom    will    die 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer.      91 

beyond  all  doubt,  is  so  absurdly  squeamish 
that  I  dare  not* tell  the  gentle  reader  the 
answer,    but   must    leave   him    or  her  to 
guess  what  the  fish  were  that  these  merry 
lads  of   los  meant.     Nothing  shows   the 
difference   between    the   days   of   Homer 
and    the   days    in    which    we   live.      The 
ancient  Greeks  in  the  joyous  good-humour 
of  the  vivacious  boyhood  of  a.  nationality 
destined  to  the  greatest  of  great   things, 
dwelt  upon  the  earliest  historical  riddle  on 
-record   with  a  keen  and  natural  archaeo- 
logical interest.      Not  one  of  all  the  Lives 
of  Homer,  from  Lesches  to  Tzetzes,  omits 
Jt.      Nay,  Homer,  the  Venerable  Homer, 
went  home  and  put  the  incident  into  verse, 
as  follows : — 

Homer  (to  fisher-lads). 
**  Oh,  my  bold,  Arcadian  huntsmen, 
Caught  any  game  or  not .?  " 

Fisher-lad. 
"  Oh,  the  game  we  caught  we've  left  behind, 
But  what  we  miss'd  we've  got, 
What  game  may  that  be,  come,  sir,  say." 

Homer. 
"  Nay,  (Edipus,  the  seer. 
E'en  with  both  eyes  could  ne'er  have  told.*' 


92       The  Complete  Life  of  Homer. 

Boy. 
(Showing  between  thumb  and  finger,  being  nipped  to 
death,  one  of  the  sacred  insects,  whose  name  in 
this  queer  England  of  ours  it  is   unlawful  for 
man  to  utter.) 
"  Ha,  ha,  why,  then,  look  here  ! " 
(Throws  the  deceased  insect's  flattened  body  on  the 

ground.) 

Homer. 

*'  Brave  lads,  no  piled-up  gold  is  yours. 
Nor  sheep  that  blanch  the  plains  ; 
But  better  far  the  merry  blood 
That  danceth  in  your  veins  I " 

The  first  line  of  the  above  has,  with  a 
truly  Boeotian  stupidity,  been  altered  from 

to 

whereby  the  gay,  good-humoured  plea- 
santry of  the  line  has  been  half  destroyed. 
Paros,  the  island  immediately  adjoining 
I  OS,  was  inhabited  originally  by  Cretans,* 
but  Parus  subsequently  colonised  it  with 
Arcadians  (in  Faron  iiisulam  coloniam 
dedtcxit  Paros  addtuto  populo  ex  A  readid)A 

•  Stephanus  Byzantius. 

t  Holstenii  notae  in  Stephanura. 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer.      93 

whilst  los,  originally  called  Phoenike  (that 
is,  inhabited  by  Cretans),  but  subsequently 
los,  from  the   Ionian   (doubtless  Arcado- 
lonians)  colonists,  had,  we  may  be  sure,  a 
large  Arcadian  element.     Now  Phoenician 
or    Lydian    origin   was  discreditable,    but 
Arcadian  very  honourable,  the  Arcadians 
being    Awrop^flovg^,    and,    as     they    them- 
selves   boasted,    born    before    the    moon 
itself.     From   whichever  therefore  of  the 
two  contiguous  islands,  Paros  or  los,  the 
fisher-lads   were, — and    they   may   almost 
equally  well  have  been  from  either, — the 
above  lines  are  pleasantly  complimentary. 
No    craven,    crouching,    slavish     Lydians 
were  they  from  los  in  Lydia  (for  of  that 
base  origin  were  the  lans  half  suspected)  ; 
no  lying  Cretans  ;  no  Phoenicians  bent  on 
amassing  gold  ;  but  bold,  pre-lunar  Arca- 
dians ;  hunters  too,  not  shepherds — that  is, 
the  creme  de  la  ereme  of  all   Hellas.     The 
idea  is  well  kepi  up  all  through.     Petty 
and  vulgar  as  this   incident  may  seem,  it 
has  many  interesting  points  about  it.      It 
is  the  last  incident  recorded  in  the  Life  of 
Homer.       It   elicited    the    only    flash    of 
humour  we  have  in  all  his  works.     It  has 
kept   alive   even    to    this    very  hour   the 


94       The  Complete  Life  of  Homer, 

oldest  riddle  in  the  world.  It  gave  rise 
to  a  Tptyspwu  [x^Qos — Aiiglice  (a  right  old 
saw),  when  any  very  puzzling  question 
was  put.  "  Even  Homer  could  make 
nothing  of  t/iatr  Lastly,  it  was  most 
idiotically  believed  to  be  the  cause  of  our 
poet's  death.  It  was  really  the  cause  of 
his  last  smile  ( one  of  his  few,  alas !  very 
few  smiles)  in  this  world.  It  also  formed 
the  theme  of  the  very  last  stanza  he  ever 
penned.  But,  will  it  be  credited  ? — not  only 
do  several  of  the  authors  of  the  so-called 
Lives  of  Homer  tell  us  that  he  died  of 
vexation  because  he  could  not  make  out 
the  riddle  of  these  "litde  vulgar  Ian 
boys,"  on  whom  much  handling  of  stale 
fish  had  bred  the  answer  thereto,  but 
actually  the  oracle  of  Delphi  cooked  up 
an  ex  post  facto  prophecy  out  of  an 
incident  that  never  could  have  caused  the 
death  of  our  poet,  or  any  one  else.  But  of 
this  further  on  when  we  come  to  discuss 
the  question  of  the  pseudo- Homer.  The 
death  of  Aristotle,  the  reader  will  remem- 
ber, was  said  to  have  originated  in  a 
parallel  way.  Unable  to  make  out  the 
cause  of  the  ebb  and  flow  of  the  Euripus, 
he  is  said  to  have  thrown  himself  into  it. 


T/ie  Complete  Life  of  Hom:7\      95 

Perhaps  he  did—for  a  bathe.     And  per- 
haps,    when    he    saw    the    objectionable 
insect,^    *'not   to    be    mentioned   to    ears 
polite,"  being  nipped  to  death.  Homer  did 
laugh  and  cry  out,   ^'  It  is  positively  kill- 
ing/' or  *'Oh,  you  absurd  boys,  you  will 
really  make   me  die  of  laughing,"  albeit 
almost  worn  out  with   sickness,  old  age, 
insufficient  food,  want  of  sleep,  and  pam, 
goodnaturedly   humouring    the    fun    that 
was   going   on  around  him.     It  appears, 
indeed,  that,  in  his  real  or  affected  laughter, 
he  slipped  over  some  mud  and  fell  upon 
his  side*  against  a  stone, t  which,  in  his 
then  infirm  and  utterly  prostrate  condition, 
was  supposed  to  have  somewhat  hastened 
his  end.     Even  as  Sophocles  says  :    *'  A 
small  weight  brings  old  bodies  to  anchor" 
(or   bed,    meaning  the   grave).       Tzetzes 
says  that  he  broke  a  rib,  but  this  is  im- 
probable.   The  writer  in  Cramer's  ''  Anec- 
dota "'  (vol.  ii.  p.   230)  makes  no  mention 
whatever  of  an  accident,  but  simply  says, 
**  Homer  landed  at  los,  and  died  after  a 
short    illness."      Which   proves   that    the 
accident   cannot   have   been   very  severe 


*  Lesches. 


t  Proclus. 


96       The  Complete  Life  of  Homer. 

anyhow.     It  appears  from  another  account 
that  he  was  ill  three  days. 

But  how  do  the  weak  things  of  the  earth 
confound  the  mighty  !  The  despised  little 
insect  that  figures  ahke  in  the  bibliography 
of  Homer  and  of  Shakespeare,  how  doth  it 
revenge  the  Almighty  upon  the  blasphemy 
which  disdains  to  defile  its  lips  by  naming 
what  He  did  not  disdain  to  defile  his  hands 
by  making  !  How  has  it  ere  now  reduced 
the  beauty  of  woman  to  loathsomeness, 
the  glory  of  majesty  to  leprous  solitude, 
and  the  wisdom  of  the  philosopher  to 
delirious  ravings ! 

But  to  return  to  the  poet*s  deathbed. 
This,  however,  is  perhaps  a  misnomer. 
Pious,  robin-redbreast-hearted,  good  Sama- 
ritans may  have  had  compassion  on  the 
bHnd,  strolling  beggar  at  the  last,  and  put 
something  softer  under  him  than  ^  "  the 
ribbed  sea  sand"  to  breathe  out  his  last 
weary  sigh  upon.  But  we  are  not  told  so  ; 
we  do  not  know  whether  he  had  a  bed  to 
die  on  or  not.  If  he  had,  that  bed  was 
certainly  not  the  spare  bed  of  Creophylus, 
his  son-in-law,  who  never  was  at  Samos, 
much  less  at  los,  as  far  as  we  have  the 
slightest  grounds  for  judging.    But  whether 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer,      97 

he  breathed  out  his  last  sigh  of  relief  at 
escapmg  from  a  cold,  cruel,  selfish,  sensual, 
thankless  world  on  ''the  ribbed  sand  "  of 
the  beach,  or  on  straw  in  the  muddy  High- 
street  of  the  town,  or  on  a  bed  of  down 
m  the  house  of  some  good  Samaritan  at 
los,   the   very   centre   of   Ionian   Greece, 
hence  its  name,  at  Phoenician  los,  the  point 
where  Phoenician  sailors  first  brought  the 
Higher  Culture  to  Hellas,   the  boundary 
line,  may   I   say,  between   European  and 
Asiatic  Greece,  where  Pelasgic  eyes  first 
gazed  upon  the  great  discovery  of  Cadmus, 
and  for  ever  cast  aside  the  semi-barbarous 
runes  of  their  aboriginal  ancestors, — here, 
I  say,    most  appropriately  died  the  most 
marvellous  combination  of  paradoxes  that 
ever  lived.     Never  lived,  never  will  live,  I 
might  almost  go  so  far  as  to  say  never  can 
live,  a  man  whose  brief  threescore  years 
and  ten,  or  less,  of  life  were  so  absolutely 
m  contrast  with  his  three  thousand  years 
of  subsequent  immortality.     His  miserable 
poverty  all   through  life  is    the    least   of 
these  marvels,  if  only  we  lay  down  as  the 
established  rule  in  this  evil  world,  as  is  the 
genius  and  merit  so  is  the  neglect  and  the 
suffering.     England  treated  her  Spenser, 

II 


98       The  Complete  Life  of  Homer. 

her  Milton,  her  Butler,  her  Otway,  her 
Chatterton,  and  her  Clare  ;  France  her 
great  fabulist,  La  Fontaine;  Italy  her  Dante 
and  her  Tasso ;  Spain  her  Cervantes ; 
Denmark  her  Kepler;  and  Portugal  her 
Camoens,  very  little  better  than  Greece 
treated  her  Homer  and  her  Socrates. 
Jerusalem  is  not  the  only  city  that  first 
stoned  her  prophets  and  then  raised  monu- 
ments in  their  honour.  Smyrna  is  not  the 
only  city  that  rejected  him  that  was  sent 
unto  it  in  his  lifetime,  and  after  his  death 
semi-deified  not  him  only  but  his  mother 
before  him,  and  built  him  an  Homerceum 
and  worshipped  him  for  ever  after  therein 
with  games,  and  invocations,  and  sacrifices. 
It  is  only  the  contrast  between  this  picture 
and  that,  that  is  so  singular.  After  his 
death  he  found  admirers  in  plenty  to  carve 
statues,  build  temples,  and  forge  oracles  in 
his  honour ;  but  in  his  lifetime  he  found  no 
one  to  give  him  food,  or  clothes  to  wear,  or 
a  bed  to  lie  on  : — 

"  Worse  housed  than  fox  in  hole,  or  bird  in  nest, 
Stretch'd  on  the  beach  in  fluttering  tatters  dress'd, 
Life's  chain  flung  off",  he  sank  at  last  to  rest" 

The  sublimity  of  his  genius  could  not 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer.      99 

procure  him  an  asylum  in   the  very  town 
that  claimed  the  honour  of  his  birth  :— 

"Seven  mighty  cities  claim  great  Homer  dead, 
Ihrough  which  aUve  the  poet  begg'd  his  bread." 

They  struck  money  with  his  likeness  and 
name  upon  it,  but  in  his  lifetime  he  never 
had  any  money;  he  lived  and  died  in 
excessive  indigence. 

The  reader  will  perhaps  call  to  mind  one 
passage  in  -  The  Life  "  apparently  some- 
what in    contradiction   of  the   foregoing  ► 
-And  having  collected  sufficient  substance 
he  married  a  wife."     But  to  this  I  would 
reply,  that  the  author  is  obviously  defendino- 
the  poet  against  the  charge  of  an  imprudent 
marriage,  contracted  in  direct  violation  of 
every  precept  laid  down  for  the  guidance 
of  mankind  by  St.  Malthus.     But  methinks 
the    defence   is    somewhat    uncalled    for. 
Hard-hearted   must  have  been  the    Mal- 
thusian  of  Colophon  to  whom,  I  presume 
the  apology  in  question  was  addressed,  and 
hard-hearted  must  be  the   Malthusian  of 
the  present  day  that  would  grudge  our 
poet  one  gleam  of  sunshine  in  a  life    the 
rest  of  which  was  so  wild  and  stormy,'  one 
green  oasis  in  so  howling  a  desert,  a  wife 

If  2 


lOO     The  Complete  Life  of  Homer. 

to  solace  his  blindness,  and  children  to  hang 
around  his  neck  and  listen  enraptured  to 
his  lays.     But  it  is  a  noteworthy  fact,  one 
of  the  thousand-and-one    proofs   I    could 
adduce,  of  our  author's  holy  reverence  for 
historical  accuracy,  that,  though  to  make 
his  way  in  a  strange  place  and  save  up 
money  enough  to  be  in  a  position  to  marry 
and  to  have  two  daughters  (the  Malthusian 
allowance,  pray  kindly  observe  to  his  credit, 
my  dear  good  Malthusian  friends),  and  to 
give  one  of  them  in  marriage  to  a  man  of 
Chios,  Homer   must  have  lived  at   least 
twenty  years  at  Chios,  yet  our  poet's  life  at 
Chios  occupies  less  than  six  lines,  that  is 
to  say,  less  than  the  ninetieth  part  of  the 
-entire    "  Life  "    according  to  the  pseudo- 
Herodotus.      In  other  words,  there  is  here 
an  all  but  absolute  lacuna  of  twenty  years 
or  more.     Instead  of  six  lines  we  should 
have  at  least  six  pages.     How  are  we  to 
fill  up  this  sad  hiatus  ? 

Let  us  see.  We  have  what  Plato  tells 
us  about  Creophylus.  Plato  tells  us  certain 
highly  discreditable  things  of  him  in  his 
^'  Respublic"  (bk.  x.  p.  500),  where,  con- 
trasting him  with  Pythagoras,  who  ab- 
stained from  all  meat,  and  did  not  even 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer.     10 1 

allow^  his  followers  all  vegetables,  he 
punningly  calls  him  not  Creophylus  (king 
of  his  clan)  but  Creophilus  (fond  of  meat), 
and  accuses  him  of  gross  neglect  of  the 
poor  blind  poet  at  the  dinner-table.*  But 
had  this  been  so  Homer  would  not  have 
given  him  his  daughter  in  marriage.  We 
know  from  the  "Odyssey"  that  Homer 
suffered  at  the  impious  table  of  the  Virros 
of  Chios  all  the  coarse  insults 

**That  patient  merit  of  the  unworthy  takes," 

but  that  his  friend  and  fellow-minstre? 
should  take  advantage  of  his  blindness  to 
filch  the  best  pieces  off  his  platter  is  surely 
quite  incredible.  Severe  as  is  the  language 
of  Asius,  two  centuries  later,  in  speaking  of 
a  Creophylus  in  his  day  : — 

"  Lame,  scab-mark'd,  old,  in  stroller's  tatters  came 
Knisokolax  uncall'd,  in  search  of  porridge  ;"  t 

and  that  of  Lucian  in  that  most  interesting 
piece,  **  The  Lapithae,"  we  cannot  think  so 
of  the  Creoplylus,  to  whom  the  poet  gave 
his   daughter  in  his  lifetime,   and  on   his 

» 

♦  Respublica,  bk.  x.  p.  500. 
t  Athenaeus. 


I02      The  Complete  Life  of  Horner, 

deathbed  of  sand,  or  straw,  or  down,  or 
whatever  it  was,  bequeathed  the  venerable 
treasure  of  his  immortal  manuscripts.  Still, 
that  his  bed  was  not  of  roses,  his  picture 
of  Ulysses,  the  beggar,  at  Ithaca,  and  his 
Thersites  and  Melanthius  lead  us  to  be- 
lieve. And  from  Plato  we  may  infer  that 
if  not  Creophylus,  there  were  plenty  of 
half-starving  poetasters  at  Chios  to  take 
advantage  of  his  blindness  and  snatch  the 
food  out  of  his  very  fingers.  And  Martial 
complains  that  his  own  age  laughed  at 
him  : — 

*'  Et  sua  riserunt  secula  Maeonidem." 

And  Diogenes  Laertius  tells  us  that  he  had 
a  rival  in  one  Sagaris,  with  whom  he  shared 
the  popular  favour  just  as  Dryden  did  with 
one  Elkanah  Setde.  Can  this  be  the  same 
as  Syagrus,  of  whom  we  read  in  Chapter 
VIII.  that  he  was  before  Homer,  but  prob- 
ably not  much  before,  as  he  was  after 
Musaeus?  He  also  wrote  an  Iliad  which 
Homer  may  have  supplanted  for  a  time 
with  his.  But  with  the  comparatively 
feeble,  languid,  and  uninteresting  conclud- 
ing books  of  the  '*  Odyssey,"  the  popular 
favour  grew  cold,  and  the  poet's  lecture- 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer.     103 

room  empty,  and  he  had  to  quit  his  present 
quarters  for  **  pastures  new." 

Strange  to  say,  while  the  disputes  about 
the  place  of  his  birth  are  interminable,  all 
agree  that   he  died   at    los.       Only   one 
authority,  already  referred    to    (Lazius,  a 
modern,    and,    therefore,  utterly    without 
weight),  tells  us  that  *'  in  his  last  voyage  to 
Greece    from  Smyrna  he  happened  to  be 
carried  to  Chios."   Now  were  our  authority 
Herodotus  himself,  writing  with  the  MS. 
of     Homer's      own    personal     attendant 
countersigned  by  the^Edile  of  Chios,  before 
him,  we    should  know  that  he  could  not 
''happen  to  be  carried"  to  the  place  he  had 
been    residing  in,   still  less  happen   to  be 
carried  there  *'  on  his  way  from  Smyrna 
to  Greece."     Of  this  passage  there  are  two 
distinct    views.        First,   that  Chios    is   a 
copyist's  blunder  for  los,  as  it  undoubtedly 
is  in  the  preface  of  Stephanus  Niger  to 
Plutarch,  and  in  the  Solinus  of  Gyraldus 
Spondanus.     Just  so,    conversely,   los  is 
found  in  some   MSS.  instead  of  Chios  in 
the  celebrated  line  : — 

*'  Smyrna,  Rhodus,  Colophon,  Salamis,  Chios,  Areos 
Athense."  »      5    > 


I04     The  Complete  Life  of  Homer. 

In  ancient  manuscripts  Chios  and  los  were, 
it  would     seem,   only  too    readily    inter- 
changeable.    Second,  that   Chios  was  the 
name   of  the  port  of  los.      There   is   no 
actual    improbability   in   this    supposition, 
for  (i),  as  Chios  was  largely,  so  must  los, 
more  or  less,    have  been    Pelasgic ;    (2), 
Chios  was  a  common  name  enough  for  a 
town.       Stephanus    Byzantius    tells  us  of 
four  towns  of  the  name  of  Chios,  so  this 
may  possibly  have  been   a  fifth  ;  (3),   as 
los  was  probably,  and  the   neighbouring 
island    Paros  certainly,  inhabited  first  by 
Cretans,    so    Chios,    according  to    Ion  of 
Chios,    W2S    colonised    by    ffinopion    of 
Crete.     Or,    rather,   the  town  of  los  may 
originally  have  been  called  Chios  by  Pe- 
lasgic settlers  from  Chios,  just  as  Smyrna 
was  originally  called  Naulochus,  but  in  the 
final  Ionic  settlement  obtained  its  present 
name  of  los,  the  name  of  Chios,  however, 
still  clinging  to  the  insignificant  harbour 
thereto  appertaining.     This,  however,  after 
all,  is  mere  conjecture.   But  what  I  wish  is  to 
show  that  no  author,  of  however  secondary 
or  tertiary  authority,  except  indeed  Tzetzes, 
with  his  utterly  wild  and  random  blunder- 
ings,  disputes  the  fact  that  Homer  died  at 


The  Complete  Life  of  HoJTier.    105 

los.  He,  it  is  true,  seems  to  have  been 
seduced  into  the  appalling  blunder  that 
Homer  died  on  thecoast  of  Arcadia,  parriy 
by  Homer's 

*'  Oh,  my  bold  Arcadian  huntsmen," 

in  the  epigram  already  discussed,  and 
partly  by  the  ambiguous  expression  of 
Nazianzenus,  **  Orat.  in  Julianum,"  ''con- 
cerning the  Arcadian  question "  (really 
meaning  the  question  put  by  the  Arcadian 
fisher-lads).  And  he  is  followed,  or  follows 
(I  am  sure  I  neither  know  nor  care  which), 
by  Nonnus  Abbas,  and  by  Eudocia  in  her 
*' Violarium."  But  even  if  the  statement 
in  question  were  not  obviously  founded  on 
a  truly  laughable  blunder,  the  trio  are  too 
modern,  too  merely  Byzantine,  to  carry 
any  weight  with  them.  Still  less  does 
Martianus  Capella,  who,  on  the  warrant  of 
a  mere  misconception  of  Pliny,*  tells  us  he 
died  at  Naxos.  But  these  wretched 
blunderings  of  mediaeval  darkness  apart, 
the  place  of  our  poet's  rising  is  still  in 
doubt  amongst  those  unhappily  constituted 

*  los  a  Naxo  24,  mill.  pass.  Homeri  s  epulchro 
veneranda. — Plin.,  N.  H.,  lib.  iv.  cap.  12. 


io6     The  Complete  Life  of  Homer. 

hyper-sceptics  whom  nothing  short  of  his 
baptismal  register,  duly  signed  by  the 
parish  priest  of  Smyrna,  and  attested  by 
the  clerk,  would  comfortably  satisfy,  but  of 
the  place  of  his  setting  there  is,  as  I  have 
just  said,  no  doubt  at  all.  Even  as  Varro 
says  in  his  epigram  : — 

"  The  white  goat  offered  on  his  tomb  at  los  proves 
that  he  died  there,  but  seven  distinct  cities  claim 
the  honour  of  his  birth."  * 

Or,  to  adopt  the  witty  imagery  of  the  poet, 
It  is  certain  that  he  died  amongst  violets 
(pun  upon  los,  ion  meaning  in  Greek  a 
violet),  but  it  is  uncertain  whether  he  was 
born  amongst  myrtles  (Smyrna  in  Greek 
means  myrrh),  or  roses  (pun  upon  Rhodes, 
i^hodon  signifying  in  Greek  a  rose).  The 
lans  not  only  sacrificed  a  goat  yearly  on 
his  tomb,  they  also  carved  it  on  his  grave- 
stone. And  well  they  might.  Nothing 
could  be  more  significant.  It  tells  us  of 
the  yEgean,  or  Goat  Sea,  of  which  los  was 
the  sacred  centre  ;  of  goat-footed  goat- 
horned  iElgokeros  (Pan),  his  father,  and 
Goat's    Bay  (ifigina),    from    whence   his 


Leo  Allatius,  p.  175, 


y 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer.      107 

mother  fled — I  mean  his  father  and  mother, 
according  to  the  Ian  legend  adopted  by 
Aristotle.  It  tells  us  of  Egypt,  or  Goat- 
land,  that  was,  if  Smyrna  was  not,  his 
undoubted  birthplace  ;  of  the  segis  (or 
shield  with  a  goat  upon  it)  of  Jupiter  and 
Minerva  ;  and  the  goat's  horns  of  the  altar 
of  Apollo  (his  three  arch-gods)  ;  andlasdy, 
of  his  life  of  utter  contumely,  and  the  nick- 
name (yExv^gos,  Goat),  that  he  appended 
to  his  works. 

And  even  so  it  is  easier  to  arrive,  at 
least  approximately,  at  the  date  of  his 
death  than  at  that  of  his  birth, — 

"  Humanis  rebus  excessit  in  insula  lo  CLX.  ante 
urbem  conditam."  * 

He  departed  from  human  affairs  in  the 
island  of  los,  913B.C.,  according  to  Solinus, 
with  whom  Nepos  and  Aulus  Gellius 
appear  to  agree,  their  ''  vixit  "  being  in  all 
probability  equivalent  to  Solinus's  ''hu- 
manis rebus  excessit."  And  the  anony- 
mous writer  of  the  Ecloge  Historiarum 
in  Cramer's  ''Anecdota  Parisiana  "t  (query, 

*  Solinus,  cap.  17. 

t  Allatius,  "  De  Patria  Homeri,"  p.  178  ;  Cramer's 
"  Anecdota  Parisiana." 


io8     The  Complete  Life  of  Homer. 

John    Tzetzes),    tells     us,    "  at    the    age 
of  ninety." 

This  date  gives  us  Homer  born  1003 
B.C.,  a  date  not  very  wide  of  the  true  one 
— 1015  B.C.  But  surely  at  ninety,  after  a 
life  of  so  much  privation  and  hardship,  he 
was  rather  too  old  to  recommence  his 
wanderings.  Say,  then,  he  died  a  little 
over  seventy, — that  is,  according  to  the 
true  date,  about  944  B.C. ;  and  further  say 
that  this  date  was  perfectly  well  known,  as 
it  must  have  been  as  long  as  the  record  of 
his  tombstone,  attested  by  the  lans,  re- 
mained to  tell  the  tale,  but  that  his  age  at 
death  was  not,  but  was  the  subject  of  very 
natural  exaggeration  :  this  may  serve  to 
account  for  Aristotle's  date  of  1043  ^-^-^  ^^ 
he  believed  that  Homer  died  at  over 
ninety  (whilst  he  really  died  at  only 
seventy-one  or  seventy- two),  and  allowed 
something  for  round  numbers,  and  (adopt- 
ing the  erroneous  reading  Raluptei) 
something  also  for  the  time  it  took  to  put 
the  stone  up.  Thus  the  difference  between 
the  true  date  and  that  of  Aristotle  may  be 
little  more  than  the  difference  of  the  age 
at  which  we  suppose  he  died.  But  Solinus 
unhappily  was  misled  by  some  record  or 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer.      1 09 

other  of  the  birth  of  Homer  the  Younger 
913  B.C.,  which  he  took  to  be  the  record 
of  the  death  of  Homer  the  Elder,  tran- 
slating the  unhappily  ambiguous  Greek 
word  gegone,  with  Nepos  and  the  rest  of 
the  Latin  school,  by  ''vixit/'  not  '*natus  est." 
Dismissing,  then,  Solinus  and  Co.,  and 
coming  to  Herodotus  and  Aristotle,  which, 
we  ask,  is  most  likely  to  be  right  respect- 
ing the  age  at  which  Homer  died — Hero- 
dotus or  Aristotle  }  Philosophers,  living 
calm,  tranquil  lives,  live  long,  we  know;  but 
far,  very  far  different  is  the  case  of  one  like 
Homer.  It  is  absolutely  incredible  that  the 
delicate  sensitive  organisation  of  the  child 
of  genius  should  have  endured  the  strain 
of  ninety  years  of  continuous  and  inces- 
sant privation,  hardship,  exposure,  humi- 
liation, coarse  insult,  and  every  form  of 
sorrow,  as  man  and  poet,  and  not  impro- 
bably also  as  husband  and  father,  and  then 
elastic  as  ever  started  upon  an  intermin- 
able journey  over  all  the  cities  of  Asia 
Minor,  and  then  all  over  Greece,  had  life 
been  spared.  If  the  reader  thinks  with 
me,  he  will  admit,  even  without  the  elabo- 
rate arguments  adduced  farther  on,  that 
Homer   was    born    1015    b.c.     But  if  he 


no      The  Complete  Life  of  Homer, 

thinks  the  cases  of  such  mild  philosophers 
as  Isocrates,  Plato,  Gorgias,  Democritus, 
Newton,  or  Fontenelle  are  ad  rem, — if  he 
can  adduce  one  single  poet  that,  after  the 
rack  of  ninety  such  years  as  Homer's,  was 
ready,  with  mental  and  bodily  energies 
still  but  litde  impaired,  to  travel  by  sea 
and  land  for  an  indefinite  number  of  years, 
and  blind,  too,  over  the  whole  civilised 
world,  1  have  done, — verbicm  non  ajuplius 
adda7u.  I  admit  with  Aristode  that 
Homer  was  born,  say,  1043  ^•^'-  ^^^  ob- 
serve, given  944  B.C.,  or  thereabouts,  as  the 
date  of  our  poet's  death,  only  two  dates  for 
his  birth  are  possible, — that  of  Aristotle 
1043  ^-c.,  and  that  of  Philostratus  and 
Cyril  1015  B.C.  But  I  think  any  reader 
that  compares  the  life  according  to  Aris- 
tode with  that  according  to  Herodotus, 
will  admit  the  latter's  age  at  death,  even  if 
it  were  no\.per  se  so  much  more  probable. 
Why,  even  Voltaire,  though  one  of  ten 
thousand,  and  though  his  life  had  been  as 
favourable  to  longevity  as  Homer's  was 
unfavourable,  broke  down  some  years 
under  ninety  in  coming  only  from  Ferney 
to  Paris,  though  not  half-starved  upon 
semi-putrid  meat  and  mouldy  biscuits,  and 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer,     1 1 1 

stifled  in  the  filthy  hold  of  a  third  or 
fourth-class  merchant  vessel,  and  lying  on 
the  hard  beach  for  preference,  and  worn 
out  with  the  ceaseless  sting  of  unmerited 
want  as  Homer  was,  but  rich,  jubilant, 
f^ted,  and  honoured.  True,  Cato  the 
Censor  begot  the  progenitor  of  Addison's 
Cato  at  eighty  ;  true,  Parr  stood  in  a  white 
sheet,  taper  in  hand,  at  a  hundred  and 
twenty  for  a  bastard  ;  true,  the  Poet  Lau- 
reate printed  his  prize  poem,  ''  Timbuctoo," 
just  sixty  years  ago;  but  how  different 
from  their  tranquil  and  happy  lives  was 
that  of  this  child  of  want  and  anguish. 
And,  nota  be7ie,  the  author  of  the  '*  Life  of 
Lives  "  never  once  speaks  of  our  poet  as 
old,  though  at  seventy-one  or  seventy-two 
he  was  certainly  a  wonderful  old  man  to 
contemplate  so  vast  a  tour. 

And  now  we  come  to  the  last  scene  of 
all — his  burial.  He  was  buried  on  the 
beach  by  his  shipmates,  and  by  such  of  the 
people  of  the  city  as  had  communed  with 
him.  And  the  people  of  los  carved  this 
elegiac  stanza  upon  his  tombstone  a  long 
time  afterwards,  when  his  poetry  had  now 
been  made  known  and  had  come  into 
vogue,    and  was   admired  by  every  one. 


112      The  Complete  Life  of  Homer. 

''For  It  IS  not  Homers."  No,  not  our 
Homer's.  But  Proclus  says  :  '*  It  is 
Homers."  ''Yes,"  adds  Herodotus,  *' the 
pseudo-Homer's."  The  pseudo- Homer 
wrote  it  when  he  came  to  los  about  885 
B.C.  Till  then  the  poet's  grave  was  that  of 
the  penniless  pauper  buried  at  the  expense 
of  the  parish — a  mound  of  turf  and  no  more. 
But  now  a  gravestone  of  marble  from  the  ad- 
joining island  was  put  up,  with  the  marble 
figure  of  a  goat  (the  device  of  Jupiter  and 
Minerv^a)  and  the  laurel  of  Apollo  over- 
hanging it  (these  we  know  were  the  poet's 
three  arch-gods),  and  underneath  this  in- 
scription : — 

*'  Here  Mother  Earth  the  sacred  head  did  hide, 
Whence  sprang  the  Iliad— Homer,  Greece's  pride. 

Two  hundred  and  forty  years  after  the  Trojan  war. 
Which  he  illustrated  by  his  poesy,  I,  Homer,  the 
Son  of  Euphron,  erected  this  monument." 

The  three  last  lines  are  not  in  **The 
Life,"  by  Herodotus  ;  but  they  are  in 
the  highest  degree  probable.  And  why 
do  I  say  in  the  highest  degree  pro- 
bable ?  It  is  a  well-known  fact  that  in 
884  B.C.  Lycurgus  and  Iphitus  insti- 
tuted a  special  celebration  of  the   Olym- 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer.     113 

plan  Games.     And  why  did  they  do  so  } 
For  a  most  appropriate  reason— to  com- 
memorate the  Grand  Tercentenary  of  the 
fall    of   Troy.      And    could     Homer    the 
younger  have  chosen  a  more  appropriate 
season    for  visiting  Greece    to    introduce 
there  the  *'  Trojan  Cycle,"— the  ''  Cypria  " 
the  -Iliad,"  the   -  Odyssey,"  etc.,   of  the 
great  poet  of  poets  .^     And  what  could  be 
more  supremely  natural  under  the  circum- 
stances, when  he  put  up  a  tomb  in  Homer's 
honour,  than  his  mentioning  the  date  of 
his   death.      One  would    think    he  could 
hardly  have   avoided  doing   so;    and  he 
must  have  known  it  as  it  has  never  since 
been  known.   He  knew  that  it  was  exactly 
mne  generations  or  three  hundred  years 
after  the  fall  of  Troy  when  he  landed  at 
los,  and  the  lans  on  their  part  must  have 
known    how  long  it  was  since  the  poet's 
death.     So  he  (and  they)  had  only  to  do 
an  easy  bit  of  subtraction. 

It  appears  certain  to  me— absolutely  cer- 
tain—that Homer  must  have  dated  his 
venerable  namesake  s  tombstone,  either  at 
the  grave  or  in  the  archives  of  los.  For 
argument's  sake,  however,  suppose  I  yield 
this  point,  and  only  insist  that,  as  long  as 


114     The  Complete  Life  of  Homer. 

the  tombstone  survived,  the  date  of  our 
poet's  death  was  well  known  at  los,  if  not 
as  being  recorded  on  wood  or  stone  at 
least  traditionally. 

Proceed  we  now  to  discuss  the  undis- 
puted portion  of  the  inscription.  Unhap- 
pily one  word  became  partially  obliterated, 
and  manuscripts  vary  whether  we  should 
read 

"  Here  Mother  Earth  the  sacred  Head  did  hide," 

or 

"  Here  Mother  Earth  the  sacred  Head  doth  hide." 

The    more    ancient    writers,     Herodotus 
amongst  them,  adopting  the  correct  read- 
ing,  did;  and  consequently  holding  that 
the    tombstone    was    erected    long   after 
Homer  :  the  less  ancient,  Proclus  at  their 
head,  adopting  the  corrupt  reading  when 
the  curve  of  the  vital  sigma  had  become 
obliterated,  and  consequently  holding  that 
the  tombstone  was  erected  at  the  time  of 
his  death.  Unhappily  the  misjudging  parti- 
sanship of  the  pseudo- Herodotus  and  the 
absurd  legends  spread  abroad  by  the  Chians 
to  conceal   their  shameful   neglect  of  the 
world's  greatest  poet,  have  given  strength 
to  this  reading  and  to  the  consequent  mon- 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer.     115 

strous  tenet  of   the  learned  Allatius  that 
our  poet  died,  like  the  Roman  Virgil  and 
Horace,  and    like  our  own  Shakespeare, 
very  comfortably  off,  if  not  indeed  abso- 
lutely wealthy.     The  following  is  one  of 
the  said  legends  :  Scindapsus,   the  atten- 
dant in  charge  of  our  poor  blind  poet,  had 
been  guilty  of  a  grave  dereliction  of  duty, 
as   we  are  told  first    by   Hypermenes   in 
his  "Chios,"  and  after  him    by   Ptolemy 
and  others,  in  not  burning  the  poet's  body, 
and  was  fined  a  thousand  drachms  in  con- 
sequence.    By  his  being  buried  at  los,  and 
an  oracle  afterwards  obtained,  los  secured 
his    body  for   ever,   which    his   attendant 
should  have  burnt,  and  sent  the  ashes  to 
Chios,  seeing  that   los  would   never  part 
with    it  to  Chios   any  more  than   Catana 
would  part  with  the  body  of  Stesichorus 
to  Himera,  or  Oenoe  with  that  of  Hesiod 
to  Orchomenus,  albeit  the  oracle  compelled 
the  latter  at  last  to  do  so.     ''  Twice  born, 
twice  buried,"   says    Pindar;    twice   born 
meaning  that  Hesiod  was  re-embodied  in 
Stesichorus  just    as    Euphorbus   was    in 
Pythagoras,  and    Homer  in  Ennius:  and 
twice  buried,  in  reference  to  his  re-inter- 
ment, showing  thereby  the  extreme  import- 

I  2 


ii6     The  Complete  Life  of  Homer, 

ance  attached  by  antiquity  to  the  place 
where  the  bones  lay.  Every  reader  will 
be  reminded  here  of  the  case  of  Theseus 
and  others  in  ancient,  and  Napoleon  in 
modern  times.  And  the  prettiest  ghost- 
story  I  know  is  of  a  child  whose  bones  had 
been  disturbed,  and  who  came  to  his  mother 
at  night  complaining,  '*  Oh,  mother,  dear 
mother !  they  have  turned  me  out  of  my 
old  bed."  That  Scindapsus  was  guilty  of 
a  heinous  offence  at  once  against  piety  and 
patriotism  he  might  have  learnt  from  our 
poet  himself  in  those  charming  lines  where 
he  says : — 

"  Come,  let  us  gather  our  dead, 
With  oxen  and  mules  so  fleet, 
And  lay  in  a  circle  and  burn 
A  little  beyond  the  fleet. 

That  when  we  return  at  last 

To  our  own  dear  native  shore, 

His  comrade  may  bear  to  each  man's  child, 

The  remains  of  his  sire  no  more." 

Pity  the  Chians  did  not  know  the  value 
of  the  poet  Heaven  had  sent  them  earlier  ! 
When  he  was  alive  they  neglected,  insulted, 
and  starved  him ;  but  when  he  was  dead 
they  made  a  fuss  over  his  bones.  As  if  it 
mattered  one  straw  whether  they  had  his 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer.     117 

bones  or  his  ashes,  or  neither  one  nor  other. 
But  in  the  superstition  of   their  too-late 
remorse  they   no  doubt    thought   it   did. 
They    had    blasphemed    the    spirit,   they 
would  now  idolize  the  letter;    they  had 
spurned   the  Heaven-sent    prophet,    they 
would   make  a  sacred   relic  of  the  mande 
he  had  dropped.     The  finest  soul  God  ever 
breathed   forth  they  had  with  their  cold- 
blooded heardessness  driven  from  its  frail 
tenement  of  clay ;  and  now  of  that  poor 
time-decayed,    wrong   and  sorrow-flawed, 
death-broken   hovel  they  would  make    a 
temple.   They  had  hissed  their  Roscius  off 
the    stage,    they    would    paint    on    every 
drop-curtain  the  empty   mask  he  had,  as 
he  fled,  left  behind  him.     Methinks  I  see 
his    widow   (such    a    wife    as     Milton    or 
Shakespeare,  or  Dante,  or  Socrates  had 
groaned    with)    beating    her    breast    and 
tearing  her  hair.     Methinks  I  see  his  two 
daughters  (such  Gonerils  and  Regans  as 
Lear  invoked  Heaven's  curse  upon,  such 
children    as    rebelled    against    Sophocles 
and    Milton)    crying,    *'  Oh,    father,    oh, 
dear  father,  why  have  we  not  even  thy 
ashes  to  mourn  over  }  "     Poets  decreed  by 
Heaven  to  life-long  celibacy  have  ever  such 


ii8     The  Complete  Life  of  Homer. 

wives  and  such  children  ;  and  the  profound 
silence  of  antiquity,  and  the  sinister  gibes  of 
Plato  concerning    Creophylus,   the   poet's 
son-in-law,  fill  our  souls  with  evil  auguries. 
But  the  whole  story  is  obviously  absurd. 
What !  a  slave  fined  from  £^^0  to  ;^50 ! 
How  rich  then  his  master  must  have  been ! 
How  comes  it  then  that  his  master  went 
about  singing  a  litde  while  before  at  the 
doors  of  the  well-to-do  for  coppers,  and  for 
clay  pipkins  to  drink  out  of,  and  was  jeered 
at    by   the    vile    rabble   of   Colophon    for 
bringing  himself   in  his  old   age   to  such 
abject   poverty  ?      And   if  the  slave  was 
fined   forty   pounds  for  next   to   nothing, 
how  came    the    master   to  be  fined  only 
forty  shillings  (fifty  drachms)  for  the  very 
serious  offence  of  hawking  about  a  blas- 
phemous  poem,   as  the  pseudo-Cornelius 
Nepos  tells  us  he  was?     But,  in  truth, 
our  poor  blind  poet's  attendant  does  not 
appear    to   have   accompanied   him    from 
Chios  at  all,  and  if  he  did  his  name  was 
not  Scindapsus,  but   Buccon  ;    no  dainty 
slave  with  a  hundred  guineas  in  his  purse, 
but  a  half-starved  ragamuffin  whose  odd- 
jobbing,    tatterdemalion,     utter     rascality 
John  Tzetzes  attempts  to  be  funny  over, 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer,     119 

in  his  **  Chiliades,"  by  nicknaming  him 
Bouclon  and  Flaskon.  But  this  idea  of 
our  poet's  being  well  off  arises  from  con- 
founding the  two  Homers.  The  younger 
Homer  was  fairly  well  off,  I  grant  you, 
but  even  he  did  not  pay  his  valet  at  that 
ducal  rate. 

Of  all  the  many  extraordinary  features 
in  the  story  of  Homer,  the  following  are 
perhaps  the  most  extraordinary.  Take 
any  poet,  any  philosopher  you  will,  take 
Shakespeare  even,  how  small  a  part  does 
his  life  embrace  of  the  history  of  the  time 
in  which  he  lived  ?  But  the  life  of  Homer 
told  without  digressions,  but  in  its  entirety, 
embraces  absolutely  the  whole.  Of  the 
history  of  Greece  from  1015  to  943  B.C., 
we  know  absolutely  nothing  except  from 
the  Life  of  Homer.  Yet  do  we  see  dimly 
through  a  mist  not  one  Homer  but  two, 
and  we  have  to  stagger  about  like  drunken 
men  as  we  strive  delicately  to  ravel  the 
mingled  threads  of  two  distinct  human 
lives.  In  brief,  on  the  one  hand,  alone  of 
all  mere  thinkers  and  writers,  the  Life  of 
Homer  is  the  history  of  Greece  for  seventy 
years;  and,  on  the  other  hand,  alone  of 
all  men,  in  writing  the  life  of  one  Homer, 


I20     The  Complete  Life  of  Homer, 

we  must  write  the  life  of  another — his 
shadow,  his  double,  his  pseudo.  Again, 
three  whole  volumes  of  the  General  Cata- 
logue of  the  British  Museum  are  not 
sufficient  to  contain  the  mere  list  of  all  the 
editions  and  translations  of  Homer;  yet 
in  his  lifetime  he  left  portions  of  his  works 
in  pawn  to  defray  his  paltry  tavern  bills  (a 
few  crusts  of  bread,  cheese  and  bacon 
enoucrh  to  flavour  them,  and  a  bed  of 
straw),  and  400  years  afterwards  a  com- 
plete copy  of  his  immortal  works  could 
nowhere  be  found.  At  least,  so  we  are  told. 
Again,  alive,  the  very  abjects, — the  street 
Arabs  of  Smyrna  and  Cyme, — ''  made 
mouths  at  him  and  ceased  not";  dead,  he  was 
made  the  subject  of  prophecy.  Daphne  the 
daughter  of  Teiresias,  the  Sibyl,  and  the 
Oracle  at  Delphi,  all  conferred  upon  him 
that  rarest  and  most  unique  of  posthumous 
honours — they  prophesied  about  him  after 
the  event,  cart  before  the  horse  Imsteron 
proteron  metaprophecies.  All  is  the 
strangest,  wildest  contrast, — the  most 
pointed,  most  epigrammatical  antithesis. 
Lastly,  all  the  noblest  blood  of  '*  prehis- 
toric "  Greece,  that  of  Inachus,  lo,  and 
Danaus,  that  of  Prometheus  and  Deucalion, 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer.       121 

that  of  Kretheus,  Tyro,  and  Melampus, 
flowed  in  his  veins,  both  on  the  father's  and 
on  the  mother's  side,  yet  he  held  out  his 
hand  for  bread,  and  was  told  to  keep  his 
distance,  and  stand  away  from  the  table, 
like  ''  an  old  dog  as  he  was,"  and  had  stools 
thrown  at  him  by  the  drunken  Trullibers 
of  Scio  (''Odyss.,"  xvii.  446-462). 

Homer's  Tombstone. 

ENGADE  TENIERENKEFA 
LENK  ATAGAIAKALUP(  SE ) 
ANDRONEROONKOSMETO 
RABEIONOMERON 
TONTROIKONATEIPOIE 
SEIKOSMESENUSTERON 
ETESIDIAKOSIOIST(ES 
SA)RAKONTAGEG(RAFATO 
VTOOMHROSOEUFRONOS) 

All  the  lines,  excepting  that  concluding 
hexametrical  distich,  consisting  of  exactly 
18  letters, — the  letters  in  brackets  grow- 
ing very  faint,  and  the  last  line  (as  last 
lines  of  tombstones  are  apt  to  do)  altogether 
disappearing  in  the  course  of  time. 

I  think  the  dispute  about  the  time  when 
the  stone  was  erected  proves  something, 
otherwise  the  controversy  above  spoken 
of  would  have  had  no  locus  standi ;  in 
other  words,  it   proves  that  whoever  put 


1 2  2     The  Complete  L  ife  of  Homer, 

up  the  stone  added  the  date  to  it ;  all  the 
letters  therefore  beincr  capitals  and  having 
no  stops,  and  the  GEG  being  capable  of 
being   taken    for  GEGONE,    the    great 
ApoUodorus     misread     the      inscription  : 
"  Here     lies     Homer.       He     was     born 
{^egone)     240     years     after    the     fall    of 
Troy."      How   else,    but   for   some  such 
inscription  or  entry  in   the  Ian  archives, 
could    he    possibly    have    got    his    "240 
years"?      But  the   ESSA   in   the   TES- 
SARAKONTA    becoming     very     faint, 
Aristotle's      informant      probably      read 
TRAKONTA,   i.e..  ''Here  Homer  was 
buried  230  years  after  the  fall  of  Troy." 
If  the  reader    admits  this,    my  argument 
(page  108)  based  on  a  comparison  of  the 
dates  of  death  of  Aristode  and  Herodotus 
will,   of  course,  be  gready  strengthened. 
It  will  then  be  absolutely  exact.     And  the 
TESSARAKONTA  ultimately  vanishing 
altogether,  Euthymenes  and  Archemorus 
got  their  200  years.     All  three,  of  course, 
erroneously  ;  as  the  letters  in  the  last  five 
lines  must  necessarily  have  been  an  exact 
multiple   of  five  by  a  quasi-metrical  law 
with   which  the   son    of   Euphron   rigidly 
complied,  as  some  safeguard  against  the 
ravages  of  time. 


CHAPTER  IV. 


HOMER  S    OWN    ACCOUNT. 

But  no  Life  of  Homer  is  worthy  of  the 
name  that  ignores  the  extent  to  which  he 
speaks  of  himself  throughout  his  poems. 
He  tells  us  of  his  birth  under  the  pseudo- 
nym of  Simoeisius,  of  his  exile  from  an 
ungrateful  city  under  that  of  Demodocus. 
He  honours  his  adopted  father  Ma^on,  his 
mother  Kretheis,  his  dear  old  school- 
master Phemius,  the  son  of  Pronapus,* 
Mentes  his  skipper,  and  Mentor,  that  took 
such  care  of  him  when  he  fell  half  blind  at 
Ithaca,  with  conspicuous  mentions.  He 
tells  us  nothing  about  himself  (his  audience 
would  not  have  tolerated  him  if  he  had), 
but,  as  our  Yankee  cousins  say,  "  he  hints 
a    lot."      To    begin    with   his   birth,    he 

*  Diodorus  Siculus. 


124     The  Complete^  Life  of  Homer, 

devotes  twelve  lines  (''  Iliad,"  v.  542-553)  to 
the  native  place  and  parentage  of  Krethon, 
the  heroic  ancestor  from  whom  his  mother 
derived  her  name — Kretheis,  i.e.,  the 
Kretheid.  Just  as  the  Glaucus  of  the 
*' Iliad"  is  not  the  son  of  Sisyphus,  but  the 
great-grandson,  so  the  Krethon  of  the 
**  Lives"  is  the  grandson  of  Krethon  the 
hero.  And  this  view  is  confirmed  by  the 
parallel  case  of  Maeon,  Homers  father  by 
adoption.  Mceon,  too,  is  mentioned  as  a 
Cyclic  hero  (''  Iliad,"  iv.  394), — 

**  Maeon,  the  son  of  Haemon,  like  the  immortal  gods." 

And  observe  how  well  all  fits  in. 
Krethon  the  hero  was  from  the  river 
Alpheus,  which  flows  at  its  full  breadth 
through  the  land  of  the  Pylians,  through 
Pherae,  his  native  city ;  and  how  specially 
dear,  and  doubly  and  trebly  familiar,  this 
part  of  Greece  was  to  Homer  we  all 
know. 

And  this  Krethon  (that  is,  descendant 
of  Kretheus)  was  the  son  of  Orsilochus, 
the  son  of  Kretheus.  Kretheus  married 
his  niece  Tyro,  by  whom  he  had  Neleus. 
But  he  had  also  a  son  Orsilochus,  men- 
tioned in  the  most  persistent  manner  again 


The  Co7nplete  Life  of  Homer.       125 

and  again*  as  the  son  of  the  river  Alpheus 
by  a  mountain  nymph,  just  as  Homer 
himself  was  the  son  of  the  river  Meles, 
i.e.,  he  was  the  illegitimate  son  of  Kre- 
theus by  a  mountain  nymph,  as  Homer 
calls  her  ;  but  who,  as  Pausanias  informs 
us,  was  Telegone,  the  great-grand- 
daughter of  Danaus.t  He  was  the  father 
of  Diodes,  the  father  of  two  sons,  (i) 
Krethon,  (2)  Orsilochus,  so  named  from 
his  grandfather. 

This,  of  course,  gives  us  Homer  the  son 
of  Kretheis,  the  daughter  of  Melanippus, 
the  son  of  Ithagenes  II.,  the  son  of  Kre- 
theus, the  son  of  Ithagenes  I.,  the  son  of 
Krethon  (i.e.,  the  Kretheid),  the  son  of 
Orsilochus,  the  illegitimate  son  of  Kre- 
theus by  Telegone  the  Danaid.  But  the 
poor  toiling  spider  has  not  yet  completed 
her  labours.  She  has  proved  that 
Krethon  was  the  son  of  Diodes,  the  son 
of  Orsilochus,  the  illegitimate  half-brother 
of  Neleus  and  Diodes,  consequently  the 
illegitimate  half-cousin  of  Nestor,  whom,  as 
the  head  of  his  house,  Hom.er  idolized.     It 


*  Odyss.,  iii.  489;  xv.  187;  xx.  176. 
t  Paus.,  iv.  30,  §  2. 


126       The  Complete  Life  of  Homer. 

is  also  written  in  the  "  Life"  that  Kretheis 
was  the  daughter  of  Melanopus  (corrupted 
from  Melanippus),  the  son  of  Ithagenes 
II.,  the  son  of  Krethon.  But  it  still 
remains  to  be  proved  that  the  Krethon  of 
the  "  Life,"  according  to  Herodotus,  was 
the  orrandson  of  the  Krethon  of  the  ''  Iliad" 
(book  V.  542).  The  proof  is  as  follows  : — 
The  yEneadce  had  now  reigned  in 
peace  over  the  Troad,  after  the  departure 
of  the  Greeks,  for  three  generations,  in 
accordance  with  the  prophecy  of  Poseidon 
('Tliad,"  V.  307,  308),  but  now  ^neas  II. 
(not  the  itneas  of  the  "  Iliad,"  but  his 
grandson),  after  Troy  had  been  taken  and 
sacked  for  the  third  time  by  the  Amazons, 
goes  to  Italy  to  consult  the  aged  daughter 
of  the  Glaucus  that  exchanged  armour 
with  Diomedes  (a  noteworthy  fact  as 
proving  that  the  yEneadae  reigned  three 
generations  at  Troy  and  no  more),  and 
founds  Alba.  Virgil,  "^^neid,"  iv.  340-346, 
^'  Mesi  .  .  .  pat  via  est,''  read  between  the 
lines,  points,  I  think,  this  way ;  and 
Creusas  words  (^n.,  ii.  785-6),  '^  Non 
.  .  . /^(?,"  and^neas's  *'///^r/ .  .  .  mami'' 
(^n.,  ii.  431-4),  most  distinctly  refer 
to  the  same  old    legend.     The    Stemma 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer.         127 

i^neadum  establishes  the  truth  of  the  point 
I  here  contend  for  beyond  all  possibility 
of  further  controversy.  (i)  ^neas  I. 
marries  Eurydice,  by  whom  he  has  Ilus ; 
(2)  Ilus  II.,  corrupted  into  lulus  (originally 
named  Ascanius,  but  on  ascending  the 
throne  of  Troy  he  assumed  the  name  of 
him  by  right  of  descent  from  whom  he 
did  so;  (3)  yEneas  II.  (son  of  Ilus  II.) 
marries  Creusa,  by  whom  he  has  lulus; 
after  leaving  the  Troad  and  ceasing  to  be 
king  thereof,  marries  Lavinia,  by  whom 
he  has  Ascanius.  N.B. — The  strict  ap- 
propriateness of  these  two  names  is  surely 
obvious.  Note  also  (i),  that  the  ^neades 
reigned  in  the  Troad  long  even  after  the 
departure  of  yEneas ;  (2)  that  even  to  the 
time  of  Homer  (as  Homer's  own  language 
shows),  and  long  after,  their  race  was  still 
held  in  the  highest  honour ;  (3)  that  the 
natives  of  the  Troad  worshipped  ^Eneas  as 
their  ancestor.  All  which  could  not  pos- 
sibly have  been  the  case  had  vEneas 
scuttled  out  of  Troy  with  all  his  belong- 
ings, as  Virgil  describes  him  to  have  done. 
Virgil's  /Eneas,  then,  was  not  Homer's, 
but  two  generations  later,  as  appears  yet 
more  clearly  from  his  mention  of  Sisyphus 


128     The  Complete  Life  of  Homer, 

-bolides,  that  is,  Sisyphus  the  son  of  ^olus, 
the  son  of  the  Glaucus  of  the  '*  IHad,"  as  a 
companion  of  his  yEneas.  The  Kretheus, 
therefore,  of  whom  he  makes  such  con- 
spicuous mention,  must  have  been  two 
generations  after  Krethon,  exactly  as 
Sisyphus  was  two  generations  after 
Glaucus,  and  Virgil's  ^neas  two  after 
Homer  s  ^neas.  And  from  this  Kreth^//j 
II.  (Herodotus's  Y^x^xkion  II.)  Homer 
doubtless  derived  his  eift  of  sonp- : — 

'*  Crethea  Musarum  Comitem  cui  carmina  semper, 
Et  citharne  cordi  numerosque  intendere  nervis.'* 

*'  Kretheus  the  lay  dear  to  the  muses  still, 
Adapting  to  his  harp  with  fervent  skill." 

Nor  was  he  the  only  member  of  our 
poet's  family,  on  the  mothers  side,  en- 
dowed with  extraordinary  poetical  gifts. 
Our  poet's  maternal  grandfather  also — 
Melanopus, — we  read  in  Pausanias,  was  a 
poet  of  some  distinction  ;  and  to  this  it  is 
that  Virgil  no  doubt  alludes.  He  was 
(there  can  surely  be,  after  all  that  I  have 
just  been  saying,  no  doubt  of  it)  the  son 
of  Ithagenes  I.,  so  called  because  legiti- 
mately born  after  his  father's  departure 
with  Agamemnon  (just  as,  in  fact,  Itha 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer,     1 29 

genes  II.  was  after  his  father's  with 
yEneas),  the  son  of  Krethon,  the  Trojan 
hero,  the  son,  as  Homer  tells  us,  of  Diodes 
of  Pherie,  on  the  Alpheus,  in  the  tutelary 
deityship  of  Tyche,  or  Fortune,  an  ocean 
nymph  of  Anthea.  Hence,  Simoeisius, 
Homer's  double  in  the  "  Iliad,"  was  called 
Anthemion,  i.e.,  Oriundus  Anthea. 

Our   poet's    name    in    the    "Lives"    is 
Melesagoras,*  and  in  the  above  epigram 
he  is  the  son  of  Meles-Demagoras,  and  in 
the  "  Lives  "  the  son  of  Demasaeoras,* — 
from  all  which,  and  also  from  the  Demo-  in 
Demo-docus,  his  double  in  the  ''  Odyssey," 
I  infer  that  he  was  the  son  of  one  Demas- 
agoras    or    Demagoras,  of    Cyprus,    but 
adopted    into    the    Maeonid    family,    and 
hence  called  Ma^onides ;  the  more  so,  as 
Demodocus  seems  merely  a  slight  modi- 
fication    of     Deino-tokus,     i.e.^     son     of 
Dem(agoras).     Lucian    calls    his    mother 
Melanope  (the  daughter   of   Melanopus), 
from  which  it  appears  that  he  also  was  a 
believer    in    the    story   of    the    pseudo- 
Herodotus.      Her    true    name    Kretheis 
(daughter    of    Kretheus)    got    gradually 


*  Westermann's  "  Lives,"  p.  31 

K 


I30     The  Complete  Life  of  Homer. 

corrupted,  like  so  many  other  Hellenic 
names,  to  Kritheis  (the  Wheat-nymph), 
and  as  such  she  received  homage  from  the 
SmyrnDeans,    as    one    of     the     numphai 

agronomoi. 

He  was  surnamed  Auletes  (corrupted  to 
Aletes,  the  wanderer,  and  from  that  to 
Altes*)  from  his  Lydo-Amazon  origin. 
He  refers  to  his  own  birth  (*'  Iliad,"  iv. 
474-476)  :— 

"  Blooming  Simoeisius,  whom  once  his  mother 
Bore  on  the  banks,  of  Simois,  wherefore  they  called 
him  Simoeisius." 

For  Simois  read  Meles,  and  for  Simoeisius 
Melesigenes.  It  is  remarkable,  indeed, 
how  prominently  river-birth  figures  in  the 
stemma  and  the  works  of  our  poet.  ( i ) 
Homer  is  born  on  the  banks  of  the  Meles. 
(2)  Tyro,  the  double  of  Homer's  mother, 
the  consort  of  the  august  founder  of  his 
race,  and  the  ancestress  of  the  Codrid 
princes,  his  cousins,  under  whose  consan- 
guineous government  he  died,  brought 
forth  her  first-born  on  the  banks  of  the 
Enipeus.      (3)    Orsilochus,   the   ancestor 

*  Schol.  Iliad,  xxii.  51. 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer.      131 

from  whom  he  was  eighth  in  descent  was 
the  son  of  the  Alpheus.  (4)  Simoeisius,  his 
double  in  the  ''  Iliad,"  was,  as  we  have 
just  seen,  bora  on  the  banks  of  the  Simois. 
(5)  Exactly  similar  was  the  birth  of 
Satnius  : — 


'*  Whom  to  GEnops,  the  herdsman,  a  maiden  so  fair. 
On  Satnioeis's  green  margin  did  bear."  * 

(6)  Minerva,  his  patron  goddess,  daughter 
of  Metis,— and  none  the  less  so  because  she 
was  bottled  up  in  the  body  of  her  father 
Jupiter,— she,  I  say,  was  first  seen  on  the 
banks  of  the  River  Tritonis.     And  Homer 
was  said,  like  her,  to  have  been  the  son  of 
Metis,  or  Eumetis.    All  this  is  surely  some- 
thing more  than  singular. 
^  That   he  refers  to  his  own  early  priva- 
tions  as  the  fatherless  child  of  a  poor  for- 
saken   sempstress  mother,  in  his    "Asty- 
anax"  t  was  plainly  seen  from  the  first,  as  we 
see  by  that  strange  variation  on  his  name, 
Melesi^«^.r,  a  combination  of  Scamandrius 
and  Ks\,ya7iax.     But   this   is    not   all.     I 

•  II.,  xiv.  444,  445.         f  II.,  xxii.  484-507. 

K  2 


132       The  Complete  Life  of  Horner. 

read   in   Strabo    the   following    quotation 
from  Mimncrmus : — 

*»  We  left  the  lofty  city  of  Pylos, 
And  came  on  ship-board  to  Asia,*       " 
And  sat  before  lovely  Kolophon 
In  the  insolence  of  overwhelming  superiority, 
And  thence,  issuing  from  the  city-crowrid  river, 
By  Heaven's  will  we  took  ^olid  Smyrna." 

The  word  here  to  which  I  would  direct 
attention  is  city-crowrid  (Astuoentos), 
which  the  self-satisfied  stupidity  ^  of  the 
soi-disant  learned  has  corrupted  into  the 
utterly  unmeaning  *'strandy"  (akteentos). 
This  word  tells  us  that  when  Smyrna  was 
the  capital  of  ^Eolis  it  was  called  Astu, 
exactly  as  London  is  called  the  City  and 
Constantinople  Stamboul.  The  Amazono- 
Coiophonians  crept  along  the  river  Meles. 
and  surprised  Smyrna  about  987  B.C.,  on  a 
very  small  scale  possibly  as  the  Greeks 
had  surprised  Troy  just  two  centuries  ago; 
and  from  this  we  see,  even  more  clearly 
than  ever,  that  Homer  was  indeed  the 
Astu-anax  that  he  here  describes,— that  in 
portraying  the  imaginary  sorrows  of  the 
orphan  prince  of  Troy  he  portrays  the 
only  too  real  sorrows  of  the  orphan  street- 
arab  of  Smyrna. 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer,     133 

To  the  incessant  struggle  between  the 
different  Greek  races  for  his  native  city,  that 
drove  him  from  it  at  last,  like  Dante,  into 
life-long  exile,  we  owe  the  moral  of  the 
most  patriotic  of  poems, — the  evil  of 
intestine  divisions, — the  neglect  of  which 
led  to  the  final  decay  and  ruin  of  Greece 
some  thousand  years  afterwards.  *'  Odys- 
sey," i.-v.  ix.-xii.,  gives  us  an  idealised 
account  of  his  eight  years  of  voyaging  by 
sea ;  and  his  epigrams  partially  supply  the 
blank  between  his  being  laid  up  almost 
blind  at  Colophon,  and  his  death  at  "fishy  " 
los.  The  scene  when  Ulysses  arrives  at 
Ithaca,  and  the  intercourse  between  him 
and  Eumaeus,  are  drawn  very  largely 
from  the  life.  Demodocus,  at  the  court  of 
Alcinous,  represents  the  treatment  the  blind 
poet  received  from  all  true-hearted  lovers 
of  song;  Ulysses,  at  Ithaca,  the  coarse 
insults  he  had  to  put  up  with  from  the  rude, 
unfeeling,  and  ignoble.  Book  iv.  gives 
us  Homer  at  Chios ;  book  xiii.  gives  us 
Homer  at  Ithaca ;  books  xiv.  and  xv. 
at  Bolissus.  All  the  portion  concerning 
the  suitors  refers  to  his  unworthy  reception 
at  Chios  till  his  Penelope  took  pity  upon 
him  ;    it  portrays  him   prematurely  worn 


132      The  Complete  Life  of  Homer. 

read    in   Strabo    the   following    quotation 
from  Mimncrmus : — 

**  We  left  the  lofty  city  of  Pylos, 
And  came  on  ship-board  to  Asia,'       ^ 
And  sat  before  lovely  Kolophon 
In  the  insolence  of  overwhelming  superiority, 
And  thence,  issuing  from  the  city-croivri d  river, 
By  Heaven's  will  we  took  ^Eolid  Smyrna." 

The  word  here  to  which  I  would  direct 
attention  is  city-crownd  (Astuoentos), 
which  the  self-satisfied  stupidity  of  the 
soi'disant  learned  has  corrupted  into  the 
utterly  unmeaning  "strandy"  (akteentos). 
This  word  tells  us  that  when  Smyrna  was 
the  capital  of  ^Eolis  it  was  called  Astu, 
exactly  as  London  is  called  the  City  and 
Constantinople  Stamboul.  The  Amazono- 
Coiophonians  crept  along  the  river  Meles, 
and  surprised  Smyrna  about  987  B.C.,  on  a 
very  small  scale  possibly  as  the  Greeks 
had  surprised  Troy  just  two  centuries  ago; 
and  from  this  we  see,  even  more  clearly 
than  ever,  that  Homer  was  indeed  the 
Astu-anax  that  he  here  describes, — that  in 
portraying  the  imaginary  sorrows  of  the 
orphan  prince  of  Troy  he  portrays  the 
only  too  real  sorrows  of  the  orphan  street- 
arab  of  Smyrna. 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer.     133 

To  the  incessant  struggle  between  the 
different  Greek  races  for  his  native  city,  that 
drove  him  from  it  at  last,  like  Dante,  into 
life-long  exile,  we  owe  the  moral  of  the 
most  patriotic  of  poems, — the  evil  of 
intestine  divisions, — the  neglect  of  which 
led  to  the  final  decay  and  ruin  of  Greece 
some  thousand  years  afterwards.  *'  Odys- 
sey," i.-v.  ix.-xii.,  gives  us  an  idealised 
account  of  his  eight  years  of  voyaging  by 
sea ;  and  his  epigrams  partially  supply  the 
blank  between  his  being  laid  up  almost 
blind  at  Colophon,  and  his  death  at  "fishy  " 
los.  The  scene  when  Ulysses  arrives  at 
Ithaca,  and  the  intercourse  between  him 
and  Eumeeus,  are  drawn  very  largely 
from  the  life.  Demodocus,  at  the  court  of 
Alcinous,  represents  the  treatment  the  blind 
poet  received  from  all  true-hearted  lovers 
of  song;  Ulysses,  at  Ithaca,  the  coarse 
insults  he  had  to  put  up  with  from  the  rude, 
unfeeling,  and  ignoble.  Book  iv.  gives 
us  Homer  at  Chios ;  book  xiii.  gives  us 
Homer  at  Ithaca ;  books  xiv.  and  xv. 
at  Bolissus.  All  the  portion  concerning 
the  suitors  refers  to  his  unworthy  reception 
at  Chios  till  his  Penelope  took  pity  upon 
him  ;    it  portrays  him   prematurely  worn 


134     '^^^  Complete  Life  of  Homer, 

out  by  a  life  of  hardship.  We  see  in  it 
the  incipient  enfeeblement  of  his  vital 
powers.  The  interminable  eating  and 
drinking  grow  insufferably  irksome.  And 
were  felt  so  by  antiquity.  The  references 
to  the  last  twelve  books  of  the  *'  Odyssey," 
in  the  various  Greek  and  Latin  authors, 
remaining  to  us  are  scant  indeed.  His 
hymns  tell  us  something  of  himself, — his 
*'Margites"  something.  His  **Cypria"  tells 
us  that  he  held  none  of  the  semi-barbarous 
views  too  often  attributed  to  him,  but 
regarded  war  as  the  greatest  evil  that 
Heaven  can  send  upon  our  suffering  race, 
especially  when  aggravated  by  civil  discord ; 
and  his  "  Batrachomyomachia  "  exhibits  the 
war  of  iEolid  with  lonid, — of  Athens  with 
Sparta ;  till  some  mightier  power  than 
either  swallows  both  up  alike,  as  a  perfect 
tragi-comedy, — a  tragedy  for  the  human 
actors,  a  comedy  for  the  gods  that 
look  on. 

But,  above  all,  we  find  in  the  **  Odyssey  " 
a  wondrously  rich  mine  of  Homeric  auto- 
biography. 

Can  we  doubt  that  the  following  lines 
contain  allusions  to  the  poet's  eight  years 
of  wandering  over  the  sea,  between  the 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer.     135 

Gulf  of  Smyrna  and  the  Pillars  of 
Hercules  i^ — 

"  The  prime  of  man  he  had  not  long  o'erpast, 
Yet  he  by  many  ills  was  breaking  fast ; 
For  nothing  is  more  cruel  than  the  sea 
To  spoil  a  man,  however  strong  he  be."  * 

And  can  any  one  doubt  that  the  following 
lines  refer  to  the  poet's  life  of  ceaseless 
wandering  in  search  of  bread,  till  the 
pitying  hand  of  death  at  last  relieved  him? 

"  Than  the  poor  wanderer's  life,  there  is  no  curse 
Afflicts  the  suffering  race  of  mortals  worse."  f 

Or  this,  in  reference  to  his  premature  old 
age:— 

"  For  soon  in  misery  man  grows  old."{ 

Or  this,  referring  to  the  kind  friend, 
Eumaeus  by  name,  who  introduced  him  so 
unavailingly  to  the  favourable  notice  of 
the  Cymaean  Dogberries  : — 

**  Rascal  Eumaeus,  why  hast  left  thy  swine 
And  brought  this  fellow  ?     Had  we  not,  low  beast,. 
Vagrants  enough  before  with  the  dull  whine 
Of  squalid  poverty  to  spoil  our  feast  ?  "  § 

*  Odyss.,  viii.  136-139.      t  Odyss.,  xv.  343. 
X  Odyss.,  xix.  360.  §  Odyss.,  xvii,  375-7. 


136     The  Complete  Life  of  Homer. 

Again,  our  ill-fated  poet  must  have  had  his 
own  life  of  want  in  view  when  he  w;-ote, — 

"  Him  over  God's  wide  earth  fell  ravenous  hunger 
pursueth."  * 

And,— 

"  The  most  piteous  fate  is  by  hunger  to  die." 

And  of  his  doubtful  paternity  in  that 
celebrated  dialogue  between  Mentor  and 
Telemachus  : — 

Mentor, 
**  Hail  thou,  the  son  of  Odyseus  the  wise  ; 
You're  shrewdly  like  him  with  those  fearless  eyes." 

Telemachus. 
"  My  mother  says  J  am  :  it  may  be  so  ; 
But  'tis  a  wise  child  that  his  sire  doth  know."  t 

A  most  inappropriate  reply  as  regards 
Telemachus's,  but  most  appropriate  as 
regards  Homer's  paternity. 

And  still  the  poet  harps  upon  the  one 
cruel  thought  when  he  makes  Telemachus 
pursue  the  theme,  as  follows  : — 

"  Yet  would  I  were  some  other  father's  boy, 
Who  did  in  peaceful  age  his  wealth  enjoy  ; 
But  now  the  veriest  wretch  beneath  the  sky 
They  say  's  my  father ;  such  is  my  reply."  { 

*  OJyss.,  xvii .  342.         f  Odyss.,  i.  20,-:  16, 
J  Odyss.,  i.  217-220. 


The  Coinplete  Life  of  Homer,     137 

These  lines  give  me  the  impression  that 
Homer  s  reputed  father,  Demasagoras,  was 
a  homeless  wanderer,  of  whose  fate,  after 
he  parted  from  poor  Kretheis,  the  gentle 
poet  speculated  often  and  tenderly,  but 
knew  absolutely  litde  or  nothing.  Perhaps, 
even  as  Telemachus  left  Ithaca  in  search 
of  his  father,  Ulysses,  one  main  motive  of 
Homer's  leaving  home  was  yearning  after 
his  long-lost  father,  Demasagoras,  and  if 
he  might  not  recover  him  in  life, — 

To  close  his  dying  eyes  with  decent  care. 
Or  dead  to  shed  warm  tears  upon  his  tomb. 

Again,when  our  poor  blind  martyr  says — 

"  Gods,  in  the  likeness  of  wandering  strangers, 
Shrouded  in  manifold  forms,  go  roaming  from  city 
to  city,"  * 

he  makes  the  self-same  appeal  to  the 
sympathy  of  his  auditors  as  Saint  Paul  to 
his  correspondents. 

Again,  when  Ulysses  tells  us  he  was  left 
an  orphan  with  very  litde  provision,  but 
he  could  not  stay  at  home  for  his  heart  was 
in  foreign  lands,  etc.,  is  not  this  plainly 
Homer.'* 

*  Odyss.,  xviii.  485. 


138     The  Complete  Life  of  Homer. 

Again,  in  his  made-up  stories,  Ulysses 
is  doubly  apt  to  project  Homer,  as  in  the 
following  account  of  Maeon,  his  adopted 
father  : — 

"  I  am  the  son  of  a  rich  lord  of  Crete, 
Castor,  the  son  of  Hylax,  was  his  name. 
And  many  other  sons  were  born  to  him 
In  lawful  wedlock.     But  me  a  concubine, 
A  slave  that  he  had  purchased  bare,  yet  me 
He  honoured  like  the  rest  until  he  died. 
And  then  his  haughty  children  shared  his  substance, 
But  very  little  did  they  give  to  me."  * 

Note  in  //)'/ax  a  trace  of  //y/e,  a  suburb 
of  Smyrna. 

Only  supposing  Mseon  really  Homer's 
father,  this  is  a  perfectly  accurate  account 
of  many  interesting  points  in  our  poet's 
life.  Whether  Maeon  was  really  his 
father,  but,  being  married,  and  if  not  his 
uncle,  next  of  kin,  was  afraid  and  ashamed 
to  own  him,  at  this  distance  of  time  we 
shall  never  know.  It  is  probable  enough, 
however,  and  accounts  for  the  rough 
usage  he  encountered  from  M  aeon's 
vindictively  jealous  widow,  and  her 
savage    domineering     boy ;     and     it     is 

*  Odyss.,  xiv.  199-210. 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer,      139 

further  confirmed    by   what    we   read   of 
Laertes  about  Euryclea, — 

"  And  her  he  honour'd  no  less  than  his  wife, 
But  that  fierce  beldame's  jealous  wrath  he  fear'd."* 

That  elsewhere  he  leans  to  a  less  discredit- 
able parentage,  and  that  the  legends  of  his 
own  countrymen  ignore  Maeon  altogether, 
hardly  do  more  than  leave  the  balance  of 
probability  even. 

Where  the  great  Aristotle  is  in  doubt 
we  may  well  be  so ;  and  the  great  Aris- 
totle is  unable  to  decide  whether  Maeon 
was  his  actual  father  or  only  his  step- 
father,— in  other  words,  whether  Demasa- 
goras  was  his  actual  father  according  to 
Callicles,  Herodorus,iEthiopion,  and  Alex- 
ander of  Paphos,  and  Maeon  only  married 
his  mother  after  his  birth,  or  whether,  ac- 
cording to  the  more  weighty  authority  of 
Ephorus,  Proclus,  Hellanicus,  Cleanthes, 
and  Charax,  Maeon  was  his  actual  father, 
and  not  his  stepfather,  or  father  by  adoption 
only.  It  is  a  singular  fact  that  Aristotle 
holds  a  different  view  here  from  what  he 
does  in  his  ''  Poetica."     In  his  '*  Poetica" 

*  Odyss.,  xi.  432,  433. 


I40     The  Cojnplete  Life  of  Hofner. 

he  says  that  a  demon  was  his  father,  and 
Mseon  only  adopted  him  after  hi?  mother's 
death  ;  but  here  he  gives  us,  no  doubt,  his 
true  opinion,  that  either  Meeon  or  Demasa- 
goras  was  his  father  :  at  any  rate,  that 
Maeon  was  either  his  father  or  his  step- 
father,  which   comes   to   much  the   same 

thing. 

But  how  does  our  poet  proceed  with  the 
theme  of  his  own  true  story  under  the 
ingenious  mask  of  Ulysses's  false  one  ? 

*'  And  then  I  wed  a  wife  of  wealthy  parents, 
That  loved  me  for  my  merits."  * 

Here  we  learn  that  Homer  married,  as 
we  should  quite  have  imagined,  not  be- 
cause he  had  enough,  as  the  pseudo-Hero- 
dotus, with  the  lues  Boswelliana  strongly 
upon  him,  erroneously  states,  but  because 
she  had  something.  I  gather,  indeed,  that 
she  first  loved  him,  partly  from  admiration 
of  his  genius  and  partly  from  the  pity  that 
is  akin  to  love  and  womanly  disgust  at  the 
unworthy  treatment  the  inoffensive  wan- 
derer had  undergone  at  the  hands  of  the 
sottish  Virros  of  Chios.     She  invites  him 

*  Odyss.,  xiv.  211-213. 


\ 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer,     141 

to   her    side   by  Euma^us,  whom  she   ad- 
dresses on  the  subject  as  follows  : — 

**  Go,  bid  the  stranger  stand  before  my  chair, 
And  tell  me  all  about  my  lord  he  knows ; 
And  if  the  tale  prove  true,  oh,  passing  rare 
Shall  be  his  cheer,  and  fine  shall  be  his  clothes." 

•   And  he  replies  discreetly  : — 

«*  I'll  tell  her  all  the  truth,  for  all  I  know  ; 
Good  reason  why, — myself  have  suffer'd  so. 
But,  'las  !  I  fear  yon  drink-besotted  crowd. 
Whose  insolence  to  heaven  doth  cry  aloud. 
Yon  fool,  as  she  hath  seen  this  very  day, 
Struck  me  for  nothing,  and  none  said  him  nay. 
So  bid  your  gentle  lady  wait  at  home 
Till  sunset  for  me,  then  be  sure  I'll  come ; 
And  all  about  her  lord  she  shall  inquire, 
As  we  sit  tete-^-tete  beside  the  fire  ; 
And  let  it  be  a  good  one,  for  you  see 
These  are  the  rags  of  sorry  penuree."  * 

Here  we  have  the  story  of  Othello  and 
Desdemona  once  again  : — 

"  She  loved  me  for  what  I  had  undergone. 
And  I  loved  her  that  she  did  pity  me." 

Beginning   with    an   assignation    under 
the  convenient  cloak — not  altogether  un- 

*  Odyss.,  XV.  544-573. 


142     The  Complete  Life  of  Ho7ner. 

precedented,  as  I  understand,  amongst 
incipient  lovers — of  anxious  inquiries  about 
a  dear  mutual  friend,  and  ending  with  a 
charming  interview  between  a  perplexed 
wife  and  a  masked  husband. 

Again,  still  harping  on  the  treatment  he 
was  exposed  to  in  his  premature  old  age, 
he  says  : — 

**  With  blows  and  kicks  I  am  right  well  acquainted, 
My  soul  is  tough — so  many  ills  I've  borne."  * 

And  again  : — 

"  Lady,  why  scold  because  thus  foully  drest  ? 
I  beg  my  bread  by  poverty  opprest."  f 

^  I  fancy  our  poet's  audience  got  a  little 
sick  of  so  much  of  the  same  wearisome 
tale  of  woe. 

Also,  if  Ulysses  was  the  only  son  of  only 
children,  so  was  Homer.  And  so  we  read 
in  Moore's  Life  was  Byron  ;  and  so  have 
ever  been  the  most  conspicuous  of  the 
children  of  genius— the  Voltaires,  the 
Goethes,  the  Miltons,  the  Shakespeares, 
and  the  Dantes — only  sons. 


*  Odyss.,  xvii.  2§3-84. 
X  Odyss.,  xvi.  11 7-1 20. 


t  Odyss.,  xix.  71-72. 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer.     143 

Then  we  have  Homer's  personal  ap- 
pearance  towards  the  close  of  his  stay  at 
Chios, — his  once  auburn  hair  all  gone,  his 
very  beautiful  and  fearless  eyes  dim  and 
dark,  his  once  fair  skin  withered  and 
wrinkled,  and  his  shabby  tattered  garment 
that  pleased  no  Ephesian  matron,  as  we 
have  already  seen,  no  wanton  wife  of 
Ibycus  to  look  upon,* — "  a  visage  and  a 
form  more  marred  than  any  man,"  less  by 
age  than  by  sorrow  and  hardship,  as  the 
prince  of  prophets  informs  us,  like  the 
Phineus  in  the  satirical  drama  of  Sopho- 
cles : — 

"  Eyeless,  with  clean'd-out  sockets — 
An  Egyptian  mummy  to  look  upon : 
His  eyes  shut,  like  an  inn-door."  t 

Or  Phineus,  in  the  ''Argonautica  "  of  Apol- 
lonius : — 

**  His  skin  parch'd,  shrivell'd,  and  squalid, 
And  his  nostrils  enclosing  bone  only.  "^ J 

In  this  guise  we  see  the  Venerable  One 
going  round  at  the  luxurious  banquet  from 

*  Odyss.,  xiii.  397-401,  and  430-437. 
t  Athenaeus,  iii.  p.  119. 
j  Argon.,  ii.  200. 


144     The  Complete  Life  of  Horner, 

chair  to  chair,  holding  out  his  hand  for 
food.*  And  again,  here  also  lOne  single 
phrase  lets  the  cat  out  of  the  bag, — that  it 
is  the  poet,  and  not  the  hero,  that  is 
begging,  where  the  wretched  wanderer 
promises  to  "  glorify  Antinous  "  through- 
out the  boundless  world  if  he  will  only 
relieve  his  necessities,t  a  thing  as  entirely 
out  of  the  power  of  the  true  U  lysses  as  it  was 
in  that  of  the  false  one ;  and  that  it  is  the 
poet  that  begs,  appears  yet  more  indisput- 
ably from  the  list  previously  given  of  those 
who  alone,  according  to  our  poet's  system  of 
political  economy,  are  entitled  to  be  main- 
tained at  the  public  charge,  albeit  the  ves- 
trymen of  Cyme  thought  otherwise,  not 
mere  voracious  drones, but  ''true  workers 
for  the  people,  the  priest  and  the  artisan," 
and  above  all  ''the  sacred  minstrel  that 
delights  with  song  "  : — 

*'  These  all  invite  throughout  earth's  boundless  plain, 
But  none  the  canker-worms    their    means    that 
drain."  { 

Whilst  thus  sadly  occupied  in  the  de- 

♦  Odyss.,  xvii.  365. 

t  Odyss.,  xvii.  417,  418. 

X  Odyss.,  xvii.  382-387. 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer,     145 

grading  task  of  begging  his  bread  and 
enduring  all  the  vile  spurns 

"  That  patient  merit  from  the  unworthy  takes," 

the  thought  naturally  springs  up  in  the 
poor^  wanderers  soul  of  other  and  far 
happier  days,  when  he  kept  school  at 
Smyrna  : — 

"  Once  I'd  a  place  amongst  mankind,  a  home 
On  my  own  bit  of  land  I  occupied. 
Then  oft  the  wants  of  wretches  that  did  roam 
As  I  do  now  I  plenteously  supplied.* 
But  Jove,  the  son  of  Saturn,  as  you  see. 
Was  pleased  to  bring  me  to  sore  penuree. 
Whom  me  to  Egypt  with  a  wandering  crew 
Of  pirates  sent  my  fortunes  to — undo. 

We  expected  him  to  end  with  a  diffe- 
rent word — "pursue."  To  Egypt,  mind, 
where  his  father  was.  Elsewhere  he  tells 
us,  in  closer  accordance  with  the  Herodo- 
tean  story,  that  the  spirit  of  adventure  and 
the  desire  to  see  the  world  impelled  him, 
*'  Heaven-directed,"  to  leave  the  dull  re- 
pose of  home,  just  as  the  longing 

"  To  follow  to  the  field  some  warlike  lord  " 

impelled  Norval. 

•  Odyss.,  xvii.  382-387. 
L 


146     The  Complete  Life  of  Homer. 

In  vain  had  she  that,  when  his  mother 
Kretheis  and  his  stepfather  tvere  gone, 
alone  was  left  to  take  care  of  him — his  un- 
avowed  fathers  mother,  Euryclea, — his 
whilom  nurse  and  then  his  housekeeper, 
wept  bitterly  when  he  talked  of  going 
abroad  in  his  wild-goose  chase  after  his 
father,  and,  just  like  the  faithful  retainer  in 
**01d  Mortality,"  earnesdy  protested,  and 
warned  him  what  would  come  of  it.  '*  What- 
ever has  put  this  thought  into  your  head  ?" 
wailed  she.  "  Oh,  beloved,  only  hope  of 
this  hapless  household,  why  should  you  go  ? 
Your  father  is  dead  far^rom  his  native  land 
amongst  a  strange  people.  You  will  never 
see  him  more  ;  and  when  you  are  gone 
they  will  plot  against  you  and  divide  all 
that  you  leave  behind  you.*'* 

But  of  Penelope, — that  is,  of  Kretheis, 
— the  poet  says  not  a  word.  And  why  ? 
She  is  silent  in  the  tomb.  The  words  of 
the  poet's  devoted  monitress  come  only  too 
true.  He  never  does  see  his  mysterious 
father.  This  the  poet  puts  with  exceeding 
force.  Harlequin  enters  upon  the  scene, 
and  slaps  his  wand  down  upon  the  boards, 

*  Odyss.,  ii.  361-368. 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer.     147 

and  straightway  Hyde  becomes  JekyI  and 
Homer  Ulysses  ("  Odyss.,"  xvi.  155-219); 
Telemachus  sees  his  father  again,  but 
Homer  his  father  never. 

And  he  shares  the  fate  of  Demosthenes. 
His  scanty  havings  are  harpied  away  from 
him  during  his  absence.  He  returns  from 
his  last  voyage  to  find  all  gone,  and  his 
good  old  dog  Argus*  neglected.  This 
dog,  then  quite  young,  he  used  to  take  out 
along  with  his  boys  when  he  had  his  school; 
and  (whilst  he  pored  upon  the  hallowed 
spot  where,  as  he  nesded  a  tiny  infant 
amongst  the  rushes,  Artemis  had  moistened 
with  soul-sustaining  nectar  the  pale  lips  of 
his  dying  mother)  those  litde  innocents 
would  throw  it  into  the  water,  crying, ''  Hey, 
Argy!  hey,  then,  Argy!"  {lo,  Argidion  /  To, 
Argid707t  I),  and  play  at  hare  and  hounds, 
fox  and  geese,  bloody  Tom,  and  catch-who- 
can,on  the  soft  green  turf,  thedogall  the  time 
acting  a  prominent  part  and  doubling  their 
merriment.  Even  as  Homer  says  :  "  And 
the  young  men  led  it  against  the  wild  goats 
and  the  roesandhares"(^'Odyss.,"xvii.  294- 

•  So  named  from  his  great  and  glorious  ancestor 
that  gave  its  name  to  the  then  capital  of  Greece. 

L  2 


148     The  Complete  Life  of  Homer. 

295).  That  is,  our  poet's  pretty  hds  lugged 
it   barking  along   with  them  in  all  their 
above-named   merry    antics.     The    word 
Agineskon  alone  betrays  the  true  nature  of 
the  *' hunting."  The  boys  themselves  were 
*'the   wild   goats   and  the   roes   and   the 
hares."  The  commencementof  the  twenty- 
first   book  of  the  ''  Iliad "   is   an   exactly 
similar  adaptation  of  the  sports  of  Homer  s 
*' little  wanton  boys,"  and  as  such  I  have 
retranslated  it  in  the  ninth   idyll   of  my 
"  Reign  of  Love,"  entided  **  Frolics  on  the 
Eld,"  where  I  have  depicted  the  boys  of 
Rabyand  their  angel  prince,  Master  Eddie 
Middleton,  sporting  about  on  the  banks  of 
the  Eld,  just  as  our  gende  poet,  as  he  con- 
templates  his  boys  sporting  about  on  the 
banks  of  the    Meles,   portrays    from    the 
spectacle  before  him  the  struggle  between 
Achilles  and  the   Trojans,  and  the  river 
Xanthus  and  Vulcan.     Any  one  who  has 
ever  read  the  nursery  rhyme   of  "  Hey- 
diddle-diddle,"— any  one  with  the  smallest 
poetical  insight, — will  have  no  difficulty  in 
admitting   the   probability  of    the   above 
conception. 

But  alas!  on  his  return  to  the  "sweet 
Auburn"    he  had  left  behind  him  all  is 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer,     149 

sadly,  sadly  changed.  He  finds  his  poor 
dog  ''uncared  for  after  the  departure  of 
his  master,  lying  on  a  dungheap  before 
the  door,  and  swarming  with  dog-fleas  " 
("  Odyss.,"  xvii.  296-300),  and  "in  sorry 
plight,  neglected  by  careless  sluts'* 
('' Odyss.,'*  xvii.  319-320),  Hyrnetho, 
Homer's  would-be  stepfather's  widow,  to 
wit,  and  her  maids,  who  think  of  nothing 
but  dressing  themselves  up,  and  keeping 
company  with  the  young  men  of  Smyrna 
(**Odyss.,"  xxii.,  and  elsewhere). 

Lastly,  a  word  about  Homer's  one 
attendant,  Buccon.  Buccon,  we  are  told 
in  Tzetzes's  *'  Scholia  "  upon  his  own  "  Al- 
legoriae  Iliadeae,"  is  the  same  as  Bruchon, 
/>.,  the  brayer.  a  word  used  by  the  Lydians 
and  Ephesian  lonians  to  signify  Ass.  And 
Tzetzes  jests  upon  the  word,  just  as  Horace 
does  on  the  name  of  his  young  friend, 
Asella  (Epistles,  bk.  i.,ep.  xiv.,  6,  9,  11,  and 
19).  I  fancy  this  one  attendant  our  poet 
was  compelled  to  get  to  wait  on  him  in  his 
blindness  is  referred  to  ('*  Odyss.,"  xiv. 
449-452)  under  the  name  of  Mesaulius,  that 
is,  the  Mesaulian.  Mesaulius  strikes  me  as 
having  a  very  Homerico-Lydian  sound. 

The  autobiographical    element   of    the 


150    The  Complete  Life  of  Homer. 

** Odyssey  "  terminates  with  the  scandalous 
scene  between  Ulysses  and  *Antinous,  in 
the  seventeenth  book,  unless  we  choose 
to  regard  the  boxing  match  between 
Ulysses  and  Irus  as  allegorical  of  the 
poetical  rivalry  between  Homer  and 
Syagrus.  And  if  for  Arnaios,  Irus's  true 
name  ("  Odyss.,"  xviii.  5),  we  might  read 
Argaios,  this  would  easily  be  anagrammed 
to  Agrios,  wild,  and  that  improved  upon 
to  Syagros,  wild  pig,  to  express  the 
despicable  qualities  with  which  his  exas- 
perated rival  credits  him.  Indeed,  this 
reading  seems  probable  for  two  reasons  : 
I.  Argeios  is  a  real  name,  which  Arnaios 
is  not.  2.  Arnaios,  as  a  corruption  of 
Argeios,  signifying  "  of  Arne,'*  may  v^xy 
possibly  have  been  directed  by  a  hostile 
clique  against  the  celebrated  Terpander, 
who  came  from  Arne  to  Lesbos.  As 
appears  from  what  follows,  and  from  what 
Dr.  Smith  tells  us  about  his  true  birthplace, 
this  would  have  been  a  pretty  sharp  double 
sting.  Furthermore,  it  was  doubtless  as 
fine  a  thing  for  a  Hellene  to  claim  descent 
from  Argos,  as  it  is  for  an  Englishman  to 
claim  descent  from  the  Conqueror.  And 
if  his  mother  were  weak  enough  to  do  so 


The  Co7nplcte  Life  of  Homer,     151 

in  christening  Irus  Argeios,  the  rival 
literary  clique  at  Chios  may  very  likely 
have  laughed  at  him  for  it,  and  by  changing 
the  **  g ''  into  an  '*  n  ''  have  dubbed  him  a 
low-class  Boeotian  lamb-stealer.  And  when 
he  insisted  upon  the  "  g,"  they  may  have 
poked  fun  at  him,  as  I  have  said,  on 
the  other  tack.  The  wit  seems  small,  but 
some  in  Shakespeare  is  not  much  bigger. 

We  learn  something  also  from  Homer's 
treatment  of  his  principal  characters. 
Thus,  an  Asiatic  Greek  would  hardly  have 
taken  so  unpromising  a  subject  as  the 
return  of  Ulysses  had  not  Herodotus's 
account  been  true,  that  the  grateful  poet 
owed  the  restoration  of  his  eyesight,  if  not 
life  itself,  to  the  care  of  Mentor. and  the 
hospitality  of  the  Ithacans.  So  he  makes 
Achilles  his  hero  because  the  Thessalians 
(probably  from  Scyros  in  Asia  Minor) 
founded  Cyme,  the  birth-place  of  his 
mother.  Agamemnon  is  so  highly 
honoured  because  yEolis  was,  in  Homer's 
day,  a  dukedom,  shall  I  say,  of  the 
descendants  of  Penthilus,  the  grandson  of 
Agamemnon,  the  King  of  Men.  Nestor 
figures  conspicuously  in  the  "  Iliad,"  and 
yet  more  in  the  *'  Odyssey,"  (i)  because 


152     The  Complete  Life  of  Homer. 

Homer    was,    on    his    mother's    side,    a 
Kretheid  ;    (2)  because  his   and   Nestor's 
kinsmen,  the   Codridse,  were  in   his  time 
Dukes  of  Ionia;  (3)  because  his  wife  was 
a  namesake   of   Eurydice,   Nestor's  wife, 
and  therefore,  in  all  probability,  a  Kretheid, 
even  if  not  a  direct  descendant  of  Nestor. 
Lastly,  Homer  derivinjr  Erectheid  blood 
(i)  through  the  ancestor  from  whom  he 
took  his  name — Homer  of  Smyrna  ;  and 
(2)  from  the  colony  which  went  out  from 
Athens  to  Smyrna  on  the  occasion  of  the 
usurpation     of    ^geus ;     he    speaks     of 
Erechtheid  Athens,  and  mentions  Menes- 
theus,    the   son    of    Peteus,    the    son    of 
Orneus,    the    son    of    Erechtheus,    with 
distinguished    honour,    but     never     once 
«nentions     Demophon,     or     Acamas,     or 
^geus,  and  only  once  Theseus,  and  then 
^thout   one   applauding   epithet.     Even, 
granting  that  Theseus  was  the  true  and 
not  the  supposititious  son  of  vEgeus  (albeit, 
♦believing  as  I  do  in  an  all-pervading  law 
^of  Nemesis,  I  regard  the  singular  barren- 
fiess  of  that  prince  as  Heaven's  righteous 
visitation  of  his  impious  fraud,  I  mean  his 
supposititious  usurpation  of  the  throne  of 
Cecrops,  even  as  the  degeneracy  of  the 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer,     153 

line  of  Theseus  himself  was  of  the  black- 
guardism of  his  prime  and  the  dotage  of 
his  later  years  in  respect  to  the  other  sex), 
but  even  if  we  admit  Theseus  to  have  been 
the  true  son  of  ^^geus,  ^geus,  anyhow, 
was  in  no  way  allied  to  the  Erechtheids, 
but  was  the  son  of  Scyrias,  as  Plutarch 
expressly  informs  us.* 

Every  reader  of  the  "Odyssey"  must 
be  astonished  at  the  fuss  our  poets  make 
about  Theoclymenus,  a  purely  fictitious 
and  gratuitously  interpolated  character,  and 
his  stemma  given  for  five  generations,  and 
at  the  extraordinary  favour  shown  both 
here  and  elsewhere  to  Amphiaraus.  I  can 
only  account  for  this  on  the  supposition 
that  Homer's  father,  Dmasagoras,  claimed 
descent,  through  Theoclymenus,  from  the 
great  Melampus. 

The  only  Greek  Homerologist  that 
gives  Dmasagoras  as  Homer's  father,  gives 
Salamis  also  as  his  birthplace.  And  what 
do  we  read  in  the  "Odyssey  "  ? — 

Then  they  sold  me  to  a  stranger, 
Whom  they  met  upon  the  way, 
Dmetor  the  son  of  lasus, 
Cyprus  who  did  firmly  sway  "  f 

Plut.,  Thes,  t  Odyss.,  xvii.  442-43- 


(( 


154    Tf^^  Complete  Life  of  Ho7ner. 

(**  at  the  death  of  Cinyras,"  II.,  xL  20). 

Dmetor  is,  of  course,  'the  same  as 
X)xVi^^agoras,  just  as  Homer  is  called  in- 
differently Melesigenes,  Melesianax,  and 
Meles^^^r^j".  Meles  is  the  root  of 
Homer's  name,  and  Dmes,  that  is,  Dmetor, 
conqueror,  is  the  root  of  his  father's  name, 
agoras  in  each  case  being  a  comparatively 
insignificant  affix,  impossible,  as  one  may 
say,  in  the  heroic  age,  but  common  enough 
afterwards. 

Dmasagoras,  then,  the  father  of  Homer, 
was  a  Cypriote  of  Salamis,  and  the  son  of 
lasus.  lasus,  the  father  of  lo,  was  really 
a  poor  faineant  prince :  how  then  comes 
Homer  to  speak  of  lasian  Argos  ?  Why, 
of  course,  because  his  father  was  the  son 
of  lasus.  Hence,  partly,  and  for  the 
reasons  elsewhere  given,  Cleanthes  and 
others  thought  Homer  (that  is,  thought  his 
father,  Dmasagoras)  an  Argive. 

Again,  it  is  in  the  highest  degree  pro- 
bable that  Theoclymenus,  the  hapless 
fugitive  Telemachus  had  so  generously 
sheltered,  should  name  his  son  Telemachus 
from  his  beloved  patron.  Otherwise,  what 
possessed  Dmasagoras  to  take  the  alias 
of  Telemachus,  in  consequence  of  which 


The  Complete  Life  of  Hoyner,     155 

Homer  was,  in  a  manner,  the  son  of  a, 
though  not  of  the  Telemachus,  thus  verify- 
ing the  strange  account  of  his  parentage 
given  by  his  Egyptian  biographers  }  And 
now,  at  last,  we  have  the  hapless  adven- 
turer's complete  stemma.  Dmasagoras 
(in  Homer,  Dmetor),  of  Salamis,  the  son 
of  lasus  (so  named  from  his  celebrated 
ancestor),  by  Euryclea,  the  daughter  of 
Ops,  the  son  of  Peisenor,  the  son  of 
Telemachus  H.,  the  son  of  Theoclymenus, 
the  son  of  Polypheides  (the  son  of 
Mantius,  the  son  of  Melampus,  according 
to  the  Homeric  genealogy,  but  according  to 
the  true  genealogy  as  given  by  Pausanias), 
the  son  of  Coeranus,  the  son  of  Abas 
{surnamed  Mantius,  to  distinguish  him 
from  the  Abas),  the  son  of  Melampus.* 

And  Dmetor  (/.^.,  Dmasagoras)  went 
as  chaplain  on  board  a  merchant  brig  (to 
adapt  the  parlance  of  the  eleventh  century 
before,  to  that  of  the  nineteenth  century 
after  Christ)  from  Cyprus  to  Egypt 
(Homer,  in  the  foregoing  passage,  dis- 
tinctly tells  us  so),  stopping  at  the 
important  town  of  Cyme  on  the  way  ;  and 
there  he  seduced  poor  Kretheis. 

♦  Paus.,  i.  43,  §  5. 


156     The  Complete  Life  of  Homer, 

And  when  he  came  to  Egypt  he  very 
naturally  took  to  soothsaying,  his  ancestors 
being  all  so  supereminently  distinguished 
in  that  line,  viz.,  Melampus,  Mantius  (as 
the  name  itself  shows),  Polyphides,  next  of 
all  mankind  after  his  cousin  Amphiaraus, 
the  most  skilful  of  all  mankind  in  the  art, 
and  Theoclymenus. 

But  to  return  for  a  moment  to  Theseus. 
Besides  those  already  given,  Homer  had 
yet  other  reasons  for  ignoring  him.  Ion  of 
Chios  states  that  CEnopion  and  Staphylus, 
the  sons  of  Ariadne  by  Onarus,  priest  of 
Bacchus,  and  not  by  Theseus  (this  their 
names  alone  sufficiently  prove),  founded 
Chios,  and  planted  the  vine  there  that  sub- 
sequently produced  such  glorious  wines. 
Hence,  and  because  of  the  exiles  to  Sipylus 
during  the  usurpation  of  /Egeus,  and  be- 
cause of  the  Codrid  princes  of  1  onia,  H  omer's 
inimical  silence  concerning  yEgeus,Theseus, 
and  Demophon.  Hence  partly  the  inhospi- 
table first  reception  of  the**  I  Had  "at  Athens, 
as  yet  undoctored  to  suit  the  national  taste 
by  that  mean  betrayer  of  his  country's 
liberties,  the  perjured  and  impious  usurper 
Peisistratus.  Hence  the  poet's  feelings 
towards  Ariadne  and  the  Minoses.     But 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer,    157 

here  one  word  by  the  way.  Ion  of  Chios. 
Does  not  this  strange  conjunction  of  words 
suggest  an  intimate  connexion  between 
thelwo  islands  that  figure  so  conspicuously 
in  Homeric  biography  ? 

Our  poet's  references  to  Creophylus  are 
not  very  plain.     Perhaps  4>*Xo*t<o^  opxa^og 
avSf  «)v  may  be  a  sort  of  periphrasis  for  him, 
(piT^oiTiog   of^^afjios   av8ptt>v,    Love-till-death, 
Leaderof  men,  being  a  fair  enough  reading 
of  xf>sa)(pij7iog,   Lord  of  the  Tribe.     Ritt- 
meister  and  tribe-lord  sound  to  me  much  the 
same  thing  ;  and  the  **X  in  4>*Xo/r*o^  is  an 
unmistakable  echo  of  the  4>t>X  in  xpsco^uTiog. 
But    who   was    Creophylus  ?      The   son, 
Eudocia     tells     us     in    her     Violarium, 
of    Astycles.      A    grand     name,     surely, 
this,— Laird-of-the-clan,  son  of   Glory-of- 
the-City.       If    fine     feathers    make    fine 
birds,  he  must  have  come  of  a  family  of 
some  consideration  at  Samos.  ^  And  he 
came   to  Chios  to  be  our  poet's  humble 
companion  out  of  the  great  love  he  bore 
to  literature,  just  as  Boswell,  who,  like  Creo- 
phylus, was  a  great  man  in  his  own  country, 
came  to  Fleet-street  to  bow  before  Johnson. 
Loving  in  death,  and  loved  till  death,  he 
married   our    poet's   daughter,   and   took 


158     The  Complete  Life  of  Homer. 

charge,  we  may  suppose,  of  his  distressed 
family  when  he  left  Chios.  And  not  long 
after  he  received  the  deceased  poet's  MSS. 
from  the  hands  of  the  weeping  Bucco. 
After  this  we  hear  no  more  of  him  till  the 
birth  of  the  younger  Homer,  who,  we 
have  some  reason  to  believe,  was  his 
countryman,  and  who  was  baptised  at  his 
request,  in  the  name  of  his  ever-honoured 
father-in-law.  In  due  time  the  child  came 
to  his  house  to  be  educated,  and  he, 
though  now  very  aged,  superintended  till 
he  died  the  (I  presume)  little  orphan's 
studies,  and  trained  him  in  the  utmost 
possible  reverence  for  the  departed  Vene- 
rable One.  At  any  rate,  if  he  did  not  his 
son  did.  I  fear  that,  as  he  resembled 
Boswell  in  his  great  qualities,  so  also  he 
did  in  his  infirmities.  Plato  speaks  of  him 
as  addicted  to  the  pleasures  of  the  table  to 
a  degree  unseemly  in  a  teacher  of  youth. 
But  Plato's  Creophylus  was  possibly  not 
Homer's,  but  his  son.  An  Astycles,  the 
son  of  Euthymus,  presumably  an  ancestor, 
was  the  lord  of  Temesa,  and  the  hero  of 
an  interesting  ghost  story  recorded  by 
Pausanias.*  From  this  source  our  poet 
*  Paus.,  vi.  6,  §  3,  4.     Cf.  Od.,  i.  182-4. 


The  Complete  Life  of  LLomer,    159 

may  have  drawn  some  authentic  informa- 
tion on  the  subject  of  the  wanderings  of 
the  Woeful    One ;  for    a    record   of    the 
whole  matter,  professing  to  be  drawn  up  at 
the  time,  was  committed  to  writing.      This 
Astycles,  being  a  Locrian,  if  Creophylus, 
the  son  of  Astycles,  was  his  descendant, 
it  follows  that  he  was  a  countryman  of  the 
son   of    Euphron,  and,   therefore,   all  the 
more    likely  to    have   his    education    en- 
trusted to  him.    His  grandson,  Creophylus 
the      younger,    as     I    infer,     wrote     the 
"  Heraclea"  (Adventures  of  Hercules),  in 
a  portion  of  which, — apparendy  the  only 
surviving  portion,  the  ^^chalia, — he  would 
seem  to  have  been  largely  aided  by  the 
pseudo-Homer    during    the    period    that 
elapsed  between  his  return  from  Greece  in 
882  to  his  death  in  876  B.C.  ^  And    sub- 
sequenriy  to   this  Lycurgus  visited    him, 
and   found  the  poet's   works  in   his  pos- 
session, and  caused  a  copy  of  them  to  be 
transcribed,    which,   I    gather   from    Dio- 
medes,   was   lost   or   stolen   at   the    time 
of  the   great    earthquake  in   the    second 
Messenian  War.     Suidas  speaks  of  Creo- 
phylus of  Chios,  or  Samos,  from  which  I 
infer  there  were  two.     Indeed,  there  must 


i6o     The  Complete  Life  of  Homer, 

have  been  ;  Homer  I.'s  Son-in-law  may 
have  been  Homer  W'^  aged  instructor 
when  he  was  **  a  Httle  tiny  boy," 
but  he  cannot  have  been  his  colla- 
borateur. 

But  to  return.  In  the  year  1003  B.C., 
the  Lydo-Amazons  were  compelled  tc 
leave  Smyrna  with  their  great  leade*" 
Maeon.  "They  then,"  as  we  learn  fron. 
Strabo,  ''  took  refuge  at  Colophon."  But 
Homer's  mother  did  not  go  with  them, 
still  less  was  Homer  born  on  or  shortly 
after  their  arrival  at  Colophon.  All  Homer 
rises  up  in  arms  against  this  view,  as  we 
shall  see  in  our  next  chapter  when  dis- 
cussing his  date.  On  the  contrary,  Homer, 
then  a  boy  of  twelve,  uttered  his  divinely- 
inspired  ''  And  me,  too,"  on  this  celebrated 
occasion.  Some  twenty  years  now  elapsed, 
— twenty  tranquil  and  happy  years.  And 
then  the  Lydo-Amazons  essayed  once  more 
to  recover  the  capital  of  their  race  from 
the  detested  yEolids.  As  Strabo  says, — 
**  And  having  sallied  out  with  the  people 
from  thence"  {i,e,,  from  Colophon),  ''they 
recovered  their  own  city."  Homer  would 
now,  according  to  the  true  date,  be  about 
thirty.      He   is  said  in   the   '*  Lives "  to 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer,    161 

have  left  Smyrna  at  this  time  from  the 
pure  spirit  of  adventure  and  travel.  And 
so,  indeed,  he  tells  us  in  his  '*  Odyssey." 
But  what  if  he  were  driven  thence  in 
consequence  of  the  treacherous  seizure  of 
his  native  city  by  the  Lydo- Amazonian 
refugees  ?  We  certainly  gather  from  our 
poet's  own  *'  Odyssey  "  and  ''  Hymn  to 
Apollo,"  and  from  the  Greek  epigram,  that 
the  treachery  that  put  his  native  city  into 
the  power  of  Colophon  led  to  his  exile. 

And  now  a  few  words  concerning  our 
poet's  parentage,  as  ascertained  from  his 
works.  That  Dmasagoras,  Damasagoras, 
or  Demagoras  was  most  probably  Homer  s 
father  appears  both  directly  (i)  from  the 
epigram,  (2)  from  the  *'  Lives";  and  indi- 
rectly (i)  from  our  poet's  own  ''  Demo- 
docus,"  (2)  from  his  alias  Meles^^^r^i- 
=  Meles  (Dem)agoras.  It  appears  also 
from  the  name  of  his  descendant  Hermo- 
damas, — ix.,  Demasagoras  of  the  Her- 
mus,  a  river  near  Smyrna  sacred  in  our 
poet's  song.  This  man,  we  are  told,  was  a 
descendant  of  Creophylus,  and  the  teacher 
of  Pythagoras,  being,  like  Melissus  the 
philosopher,  the  son  of  Ithagenes,  and, 
like  Creophylus  himself,  a  Samian,  as  the 


1 62     The  Complete  Life  of  Homer,' 

teacher  of  Pythagoras  of  Samos  would  natu- 
rally be.  And  note  how,  just  as  the  stemma 
of  the  pseudo- Homer  down  to  Terpander 
shows  at  every  step  the  strongest  traces  of 
Euphron,  the  Phocian,  the  pseudo- Homer's 
father,  so  do  the  descendants  of  Homer 
through  Creophylus  show  the  strongest 
traces  of  our  poet, — viz.,  Melisstis,  the  son 
of  Ithagenes  and  Hermo-Da7nas.  These, 
however,  are  not  the  only  traces  we  have 
of  his  descendants.  The  poet  Melanopus 
of  Cyme  and  Terpander  of  Phocaea  (not 
the  Terpander)  so  named  from  the  Terp 
in  Phemius  7>;^iades,  and  Polymnestor, 
the  musician,  the  son  of  Meles  of  Colo- 
phon, who  flourished  675  B.C.,  Bion 
(=  Maion),  the  celebrated  poet  of  Smyrna, 
and  Parthenius  of  Chios,  all  certainly  were, 
or  at  least  may  very  well  have  been,  his 
descendants,  as  their  names  alone  irre- 
sistibly tend  to  indicate. 

And  next  of  Cretheis.  Lucian  calls  her 
Melanope,*  because  she  was  the  daughter 
of  Melanopus,  proving  thereby  that  he 
regarded  the  story  of  the  Father  of  History 
as  the  only  one  of  any  valid  authority. 
Again,  concerning  what  we  are  told  that 
*  Demosth.,  Encom.,  9. 


The  Complete  Life  of  HofJier.     163 

the  name  of  Homer's  mother  was  Clymene, 
and   that  her  tomb  was  at    los.     As  re- 
marked already,  Melanope  or   Melanippe 
and    Kretheis     being    only    patronymics, 
Clymene   may  very  probably  have   been 
her  proper  name.     And  if,  by  her  grave 
being  at  los,  we  understand  that  Homer 
the  younger  erected  her  cenotaph  there, 
this   is  also    highly  probable.     But  what 
does    Homer  say }     We   find    the   name 
Clymene  three  times:  first,  as  an  attendant 
of  Helen  ;*  second,  as  a  Minyid  ;t  third,  as  a 
nymph.  J     Of  course,   she  was   a  nymph 
after  death,   as  being   wedded   to    Meles, 
and    a  Minyid  as  being  a  descendant    of 
Cretheus,  and  an  attendant  of  Helen  as 
being  the  homonym  of  the  bride  of  Mela- 
nippus  of  Percote,  who,  highly  esteemed 
as  he  was  at  Court,  may  well  have  enjoyed 
the  high   distinction  of  having  his  bride 
thus  employed.      Indeed,  Homer's  words 
that  he  was  honoured  as  a  son  harmonise 
admiraJDly  with   this  view,  and  are  hardly 
intelligible  otherwise : — 

"  And  in  the  house  of  Priam  did  he  dwell, 
Who  just  hke  his  own  children  loved  him  well."§ 

•  II.,  iii.  144.  f  Odyss.,  xi.  326. 

X  Il-»  xvhi.  47.  §  II.,  XV.  551. 

M  2 


1 64    The  Complete  Life  of  Homer. 

Again,  from  the  Daemon  of  Democritus 
of  Trezene*  and  the  obviously  identical 
Daemon  of  Aristotlet  I  get  a  further  con- 
firmation of  my  view  that  ^aw[asagorasJ 
was  Homer's  father.  And  I  further  learn 
that  he  <vas  first  a  herdsman,  and  then  a 
roving  merchant  on  a  small  scale,  which 
harmonises  well  enough  with  his  going  to 
Egypt,  and  ultimately  dying  there  ;  but  yet 
further  I  learn  from  Alexander  of  Paphos 
that  he  married  one  .Ethra,  the  daughter 
of  Orus,  a  priest  of  Isis.J  And  now  at 
last  I  understand  that  celebrated  line  :— 

"^thra  the  daughter  of  Pittheus  and  ox-eyed 
Clymene."  § 
The  one  in  the  Homeric  cypher  the 
poefs  mother,  and  the  other  his  father  s 
lawful  wife.  And  what  more  likely  than  that 
^thra,  the  daughter  of  Pittheus,  whilst 
accompanying  Helen  in  her  Egyptian 
travels,  should  have  become  the  ancestress 
of  ^thra,  the  daughter  of  Orus.  Further- 
more, of  his  mother,  Clymene,  we  know 
that  she  was  i^'boopis"),  a  majestic  beauty 
with  a  fat  face,  red  cheeks,  and  large,  full, 

•  Lives,  p.  34-  t  Lives,  p.  2i- 

+  Baletta,  "  Life  of  Homer,"  p.  9,  note  3. 
§  II.,  iii.  144- 


' 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer,     165 

finely-rounded  eyes  (none  of  your  Wilkie 
Collins  s  beauties)  ;  and  of  his  father, 
Damasagoras,  we  know  by  the  etymon  of 
his  double,  Enops,  in  the  passage  already 
quoted,  that  he  had  eyes  glittering  like 
brass, — that  is,  fierce  and  stern,  and  deter- 
mined-looking,— just  such  a  father  as  such 
a  mother  would  dote  upon,  while  she 
trembled  at  his  frown.  Lastly,  we  know 
that  they  met  upon  the  banks  of  the 
Satnioeis, — that  is,  the  Hermus, — and 
there  loved  "  not  wisely,  but  too  well,"  and 
united  herds  and  hearts. 

And  now  for  the  name  Melanippus,  that 
is,  Melanopus.  This  we  find  four  times  : — 

( I )  As  one  of  the  leading  companions  of 
Nestor*  as  being  a  Kretheid,  Melan- 
opus's  ancestor,  in  the  time  of  Nestor, 
doubtless  was.  (2)  As  being  slain  by 
Teucer,  even  as  Melanippe,  the  sister  of 
the  queen  of  the  Amazons,  was,  by  the 
father  of  Teucer,  from  which  I  infer  that  his 
mothers  name  was  Melanippe.f  (3)  As 
being  a  herdsman  of  great  consideration : — 

"  He  tended  his  kine  far  away  at  Percote, 
But  to  Ilion  return'd  when  the  Greek  fleet  appeared, 
And  distinguish'd  himself  'mongst  the  horse-taming 
Trojans."  % 

•  II.,  xix.  240.     t  Il->  viii.  276.     t  I^-»  XV'  547-550. 


1 66     The  Complete  Life  of  Homer. 

For  Percote  read  Magnesia,  and  for 
Troy,  Cyme,  and  understand  by  the  Greek 
fleet  the  mixed  Hellenic  expedition,  and  the 
Life  is  a  mere  translation  of  the  Homeric 
cypher.  Melanippus,  Homer's  grandfather, 
was  a  herdsman,  and  the  Melanopus  of 
Percote  was  doubtless  the  husband  of  the 
Clymene  that  was  Helen's  attendant. 
Clymene  and  Melanippus,  it  must  be 
recollected,  are  both  eminently  family 
names  among  the  Neleids. 

Aeain,  we  are  told  that  Mceon  and 
Hyrnetho  were  father  and  mother  to 
Homer.  So  they  were,  but  only  by  adop- 
tion. As  a  Melanopid  *  he  was  probably 
next  of  kin,  and  as  such,  naturally  adopted 
our  poet.  But  what  shall  we  say  of  his 
other  would-be  parents  ?  Some  say  that 
he  was  the  son  of  Apollo  and  Calliope, 
and  some  of  Telemachus  and  Polycaste, 
the  daughter  of  Nestor.  Of  these  the 
one  is  obviously  mere  allegory,  and  the 
other  mere  mythology.  Again,  some  say 
that  his  father  was  Daemon  (knowing), 
and  his  mother  Metis  (wisdom) ;  and  some 
that  his  father  was  Metias  (Mr.  Wiseman), 
and  his    mother    Eumetis     (Mrs.    Wise- 

•  Lives,  p.  32. 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer.    167 

woman),  after  the  fashion  of  Bunyan's 
**  Pilgrim's  Progress."  And  others  say  that 
his  father  was  the  river  Meles,  and  others 
the  celebrated  poet  Thamyras.  More 
mythology.  And  others  one  of  the  gods 
that  dance  and  play  with  the  nymphs 
(Kretheis  is  often  called  a  nymph).  More 
mythology.  Pan  was  especially  the  god 
of  fishermen  (Sophocles,  Ajax,  ii.  675-7  J 
Oppian,  Hal.,  iii.  16;  Pind.,  Fragm.,  Ixv. 
594;  Auson.,  Mosell,  172  ;  Nonnus,  xliii. 
214;  Theocrit.,  v.  14  ;  Agath.,  Ep.,  xxviii.). 
Hence  the  legend  told  by  Aristotle  about 
his  being  the  son  of  Pan  would  of  course 
be  that  of  los,  with  its  fisher-lads, — los, 
whose  especial  epithet  was  "  Fishy."  Of 
course  that  Homer  should  have  one  god, 
and  a  river,  and  one  or  two  mortals 
assigned  as  his  fathers,  is  quite  the  regular 
thing*  And  some  say  that  his  mother 
was  Themisto.  This  error  I  have  set 
right  elsewhere.  And  some,  Eugnetho, 
obviously  a  mere  mis-spelling  of  Hyrnetho. 
(N.B.  Hyrnetho  is  spelt  in  a  multitude 
of  ways,  —  Ornetho,  Ornitho,  Ornito, 
Myrnetho,  Myryntho,  the  last  two  plainly 
Amazonid.)  And  his  father,  Menemachus, 
— obviously,  again,  a  mere  Egyptian  bar- 


1 68    The  Cofuplete  Life  of  Hojner. 

barous  mismouthing  of  Telemachus,  with 
a  dash  of  Meles  in  it.  And  some  say 
his  mother  was  a  woman  of  Ithaca. 
Again  mere  mythology.  The  only 
mother  not  mythological  or  allegorical 
or  emblematical,  or  a  mere  blunder  in 
spelling,  or  pronunciation,  or  genealogy, 
we  find,  therefore,  was  Klymene,  surnamed 
Kretheis,  as  being  a  Kretheid,  and 
Melanope  as  being  the  daughter  of 
Melanopus,  and  having  a  paternal  grand- 
mother of  the  same  name. 

And  next,  as  regards  our  sweet  poet's 
race.  Plainly  he  had  Erechtheid  blood  in 
his  veins,  through  the  Athenian  colony  to 
Sipylus,  in  the  time  of  the  usurpation  of 
iEgeus,  Kretheid  blood  through  his 
mother,  Melampid  through  his  father,  and 
Codrid  through  both.  But  why  is  he 
called  Maeonides  ?  Because  Mseon  was 
either  his  adopted  or  his  real  father.  And 
he  is  called  Mceonius  because  he  was  born 
in  Maeonia,  and  Lydus  because  of  his  flute- 
playing,  and  both  because  Smyrna  is 
situated  in  both.  As  Plutarch  says  (Life^ 
bk.  ii.,  chap.  xii.).  "  And  most  of  all  he 
used  the  Attic  dialect  because  he  was  of 
mixed  race." 


The  Co7nplete  Life  of  Homer,    169 

And  last,  of  his  Chian  wife  and  chil- 
dren. Of  these  we  have  only  one  single 
w^^r^^/^  of  Homeric  cypher: — "The  nymph, 
Abarbaree,  bore  twin  boys  to  blameless 
Bucolion, — ^sepus  and  Pedasus.  And 
Bucolion  was  son  of  illustrious  Lao- 
medon,  his  eldest,  but  illegitimate*  child. 
Laomedon,  ruler  of  the  people,  is  obviously 
the  same  as  Demagoras,  adviser  of  the 
people.  And  I  have  already  shown  that 
Melanopus  was  a  yeoman  of  Cyme,  there- 
fore was  Homer  Bucolion, — that  is,  of  yeo- 
man origin  on  the  mother's  side.  And  it 
appears  from  the  next  line  that  he  com- 
bined a  few  sheep  with  his  teaching,  as  in 
those  simple  days  he  may  well  have  done. 
And  his  lady  love  was  Abarbaree,  that  is, 
of  the  blood,  not  of  the  barbarous  Autoch- 
thons of  Chios,  but  of  the  Hellenic  immi- 
grants of  the  Ionic  Apcecia.  t  Even  so 
Trusts  foolish  mother  christened  her  son 
Argeios  (of  Argos).  And  Homer  was 
certainly  a  son  of  D  masagoras,  his  eldest 
but  illegitimate  :  his  eldest,  note,  for  we  are 
told  that  he  afterwards  had  a  lawfully  be- 
gotten Priam  by  yEthra.      Lastly,  ^sepus 

*  II.,  vi.  22-24. 

t  For  the  word  abarbaros,  see  Soph.,  "Frag.,"  336. 


1 70    T/ie  Complete  Life  of  Homer. 

and  Pedasus  were  the  Theolaus  and 
Euryphon  that  he  hoped  to  have  by  his 
future  wife,  but  unfortunately  they  proved 
girls  only.  And  this  passage  it  is  that 
doubtless  misled  Suidas,  Tzetzes,  and 
others  concerning  the  sex  of  his  children. 
Lastly,  this  passage  shows  that  the  ''  Iliad  " 
was  written  before  the  **Odyssey,"  and  that 
the  first  six  books,  at  least,  were  written  be- 
fore his  marriage,  or  at  latest  very  early  in 
his  married  life. 

I  have  reserved  to  the  last  the  most 
interesting  autobiographical  bit  of  all.  In 
theeleventh  book  of  the  *^Odyssey,"  11. 1 19- 
137,  we  have  a  prophecy  of  Ulysses's  sub- 
sequent adventures  after  the  murder  of 
the  Suitors.  This  on  the  first  perusal  I 
merely  regarded  as  a  promise  of  a  Tele- 
gonia,  which  never  got  itself  written  in 
consequence  of  our  poet's  demise.  But 
when  I  came  carefully  to  study  the  parallel 
passage  in  11.  241-287  of  the  twenty-third 
book  an  entirely  new  light  broke  in. 
Here  the  poet  is  obviously  making  a  per- 
sonal application  of  the  story  of  Ulysses. 
He  is  telling  his  dearly-beloved  one  of  his 
own  intended  departure.  He  is  telling 
her  how  he  is  about  to  travel  on  and  on 


The  Co7nplete  Life  of  Homer,     171 

and  on  till  he  comes  to  a  place  where  the 
use  of  oars  is  unknown,  and  what  should  that 
be  but  that  Mecca  of  Meccas,  the  spot  upon 
earth  which  of  all  others  the  poet  of  poets 
would  most  wish  to  see, — Delphi  .^  The 
editor  of  the  ''  Life  by  Herodotus,"  with 
his  strong  Attlcising  tendency,  represents 
Athens  as  the  ultimate  object  of  his 
journey,  represents  him  even  as  most  un- 
worthily doctoring  his  poem  to  curry  favour 
at  Athens.  But  he  is  wholly  mistaken. 
Athens  in  Homer's  time  was  neither  the 
literary  nor  the  political  capital  of  Greece  ; 
and  our  poet  only  meant  to  touch  there,just 
as  Cadmus  did,  on  his  way  to  the  cradle  of 
letters.  Even  as  the  Pseudo- Plutarch  says 
in  that  mass  of  atrocious  blunders,  his 
**  Life  of  Homer,"  *'  after  consulting  the 
oracle  at  Delphi  he  sailed  {\ ! !)  to  Thebes,  to 
the  Kronia,  a  musical  contest  held  there, 
and  on  his  way  thither  he  arrived  at  los."* 
Nothing  could  be  more  in  harmony  with 
what  I  have  just  been  saying  than 
that  had  the  true  Homer  lived  to  reach 
the  mainland,  as  his  namesake  the  Pseudo- 
Homer  did,  he  would  have  been  delighted 
to   take    part   in   the   celebration   of  the 

*  Lives,  p.  23. 


172     The  Complete  Life  of  Homer, 

triumph  of  Learning  over  Time  achieved 
by  Cadmus  s   great   invention.       But   he 
certainly  did   not  die  at  los  on  his  way 
from  Delphi  to  Thebes,  but  before  he  got 
to  either  one  or  the  other.     But  to  return 
to  the  above  most  interesting  passage,  we 
learn    from    it    that     I    have  atrociously 
slandered    our   poet's   wife  on  page  117, 
that  he  died  in  perfect  harmony  with  her. 
But  this  is  not  all.     It  appears  from  the 
Scholia  that  both  Aristarchus  and  Aristo- 
phanes regarded  this  as  the  final  passage 
of  the  '^  Odyssey."     And  rightly  so.    After 
Ulysses    had    conveyed    the    melancholy 
prophecy    of  Teiresias    to    his    weeping 
Penelope,  they  retire  to  rest,   and,  as  he 
gives  her  a  brief  resumd  of  his  adventures, 
fall   asleep  in  each  other's   arms.  ^^  What 
follows  is  no  part  of  the  ''  Odyssey,''  but  is 
the  commencement  of  the  '*Telegonia,"and 
as  I  judge  from  its  broken  and  disjointed 
character,  was  written  after  our  poet  had 
for   ever   left  his  wife  and  family  behind 
him  at  Chios,  in  the  miserable  hurry  and 
confusion   of  his  subsequent  wanderings. 
Here  he  breaks  off  his  story,  but  Dictys 
concludes    it   in    the    following    amazing 
words  :  *'  He  died  three  days  after,  an  old 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer.    173 

man  and  full  of  years  "  :  *  exactly  what 
Homer  did — three  days  after  (see  page  96, 
11.  1-2).  And  now  at  last  I  under- 
stand why  the  riddle  of  the  Ian  fisher-lads 
proved  the  death  of  Homer.  He  him- 
self had  prophesied  it :  his  last  words  to 
his  Eurydice  had  been  that  'Meath  should 
come  to  him  from  the  sea." 

But  Apollo  forbid  that  aught  I  have  said 
here  or  elsewhere  should  be  urged  against 
our  poet's  absolute  veracity.  Strabo  says 
it,  and  all  antiquity  was  convinced,  that 
the  '*  Iliad  "  was  genuinely  historical.  And 
why  ?  We  may  ignore  all  the  poetry  that 
was  ever  written  and  we  shall  hardly  lose 
one  grain  of  ore  from  the  sacred  mine  of 
knowledge  ;  but  if  we  ignore  the  poems  of 
Homer  we  lose  five  whole  centuries  of  the 
fascinating  dawn  of  history.  I  applaud  the 
deceitful  seeming  truthfulness  of  *' Gulli- 
ver's Travels  "  and  ''  Robinson  Crusoe"  ; 
I  do  not  blame  the  fictitious  prefaces  of 
Zanoni  and  Otranto  ;  I  do  not  greatly 
censure  the  forgeries  of  Chatterton,  Ireland, 
and  Macpherson,  but  when  Homer 
solemnly  assures  us,  again  and  again,  that 


*  Diet.  Cret.  Bell.  Troj.,  bk.  vi.  chap.  xv. 


174     The  Complete  Life  of  Homer, 

he  is  telling  God*s  own  sacred  truth,  I 
should  very  greatly  blame  him  if  he 
poisoned  the  waters  of  our  only  well  of 
the  knowledge  of  those  early  times  by 
piling  fiction  upon  fiction,  and  the  moral 
sense  of  all  antiquity  would,  I  am  con- 
vinced, have  been  horrified.  Homer  had, 
then,  sinned  more  deeply  than  Balaam, 
for  Baalam  desecrated  not  his  inspiration 
with  perjury,  after  all.  And  for  a  far 
poorer  bribe,  not  a  "  house  full  of  silver  and 
gold"  ;  no,  nor  even  '' 7i  savoury  mess," 
like  Esau's  was.  But  were  Homer  the 
mere  inventor  of  fictions  the  Negative 
School  of  History  believes  him  to  be,  he 
would  offend,  not  only  against  the  canons 
of  Positive  History  and  MoraUty,  but  also 
against  those  of  true  Poetry.  As  Lactan- 
tius  most  wisely  says,  "  The  true  poet  in- 
vents not :  he  only  colours  and  adorns. 
To  invent  what  we  relate  is  not  to  be  a 
true  poet,  but  a  mere  metrical  novelist." 
In  modern  days,  owing  to  the  vast  spread 
of  knowledge,  history  is  wholly  dissociated 
from  poetry  ;  still,  considered  as  poetry 
only,  the  **  Orlando  Furioso"  would  have 
been  a  far  greater  performance  had 
Ariosto  abode   by   his    original  plan,    as 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer.    175 

announced     in     his     magnificent    Proce- 
mium  : — 

"  The  dames,  the  knights,  the  arms,  and  the  amours, 
The  courtesies,  the  doughty  feats,  I  sing 
Of  the  immortal  time  when  past  the  Moors 
The  Afric  sea,  of  Agramante  their  king 

Following  the  youthful  wrath  and  haughty  doom, 
Sworn  to  avenge  the  death  of  Troiano 

Upon  King  Charles,  the  Emperor  of  Room, 
And  wrought  on  France  and  suffer'd  so  much  woe." 

But  are  we  therefore  to  believe  every 
syllable  in  our  poet's  works  ^  Far,  very 
far  from  it.  Look  at  Shakespeare  and 
Scott.  They  also  give  us  genuine  his- 
tory, and  we  should  esteem  them  so  far 
greatly  less  if  they  deliberately  adulterated 
the  pure  stream  thereof.  But  there  is  a 
large  obviously  non-historical  element  in 
them ;  and  even  so  there  is  much  in 
Homer  that  we  cannot  for  a  moment  sup- 
pose Homer  to  have  derived  from  any 
acquaintance,  however  abnormally  vast, 
with  tradition,  and  that  we  may  legiti- 
mately suppose  him  to  have  filled  in  from 
his  own  personal  history  or  from  such 
tombs  and  memorials  and  so  forth  as  he 
may  have  had  access  to.  Take  a  parallel 
case, — the  character  of  Polonius  and  the 


176     The  Complete  Life  of  Homer, 

scenes  with  Master  Slender  and  Justice 
Shallow.  Here  Shakespeare  is  not  his- 
torical, but  plainly  autobiographical.  Even 
so  Homer  in  his  Simoeisius,  his  Bu- 
colion,  and  his  Satnius.  And  in  his 
picture  of  Thersites,  the  peace-at-all-price 
Lydo-Amazonisingdemagogue,Melanthius, 
the  vile  insulter  of  the  blind  poet's  misery, 
Antinous,  that  called  him  an  old  grampus 
and  threw  a  stool  at  him,  Arna^us,  the 
lazy  He- Iris  society  poetaster  humbug  of 
his  day,  and  Echetus.* 

N.B.  I. — Thersites,  the  son  o{  Agrius, 
Does  not  this  confirm  the  view  propounded 

pp.  150,  151  ? 

N.B.  2.— The  Thersites  of  history  was 
a  cripple,  it  is  true,  but  neither  squint- 
eyed,  nor-sugar-loaf-headed,  nor  woolly- 
bald,  like  the  worthy  offspring  of  Homer's 
literary  rival. 

But  in  his  *'  Odyssey  "  our  poet  makes 
a  great  advance.  That  poem,  though 
never  once  violating  the  venerable  sancti- 
ties of  history,  is  nevertheless  as  autobio- 
graphical as  Dickens's  '*  David  Copper- 
field."  As  in  Dryden's  •*  Absalom  and 
Achitophel "  the  characters  run  double, 
*  Eustath.  Odyss.,  bk.  i. 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer.    177 

and  as  in  Stevenson  s  **  Mystery  of  J ekyl 
and  Hyde,"  the  poet  projects  the  dwarf 
from  the  giant,  and  Melesigenes  from 
Ulysses. 

But  let  me  not  go  too  far  here.  It  is 
only  in  the  Ta  zv  BoX<o-(ra>, — that  is,  in  books 
xiv,,  XV.,  and  xvii.,  that  our  poet  is  thus 
autobiographical.  The  country  seat  near 
Ithaca  is  Bolissus,  Eumseus  at  Bolissus, 
but  no  farther  is  Glaucus.  Ulysses  in  rags 
is  Homer,  but  Ulysses  in  rags  07tly,  Here 
comes  in  the  faint  germ  of  Mr.  Stevenson's 
most  ingenious  story.  As  Minerva  trans- 
forms the  hero  of  the  wreck  from  hero  to 
beggar,  he  becomes  alternately  Jekyl  and 
Hyde,  Ulysses  and  Homer.  Apollo  forbid 
that  I  should  pollute  the  pure  stream  of 
legendary  history  with  allegorical  abomi- 
nations, but  that  the  lying  tales  of  Ulysses 
and  the  wily  devices  and  contrivances  of 
that  hero  and  his  worthy  offspring,  and, 
above  all,  the  harlequinade  of  Minerva, 
just  referred  to,  gave  the  poet  the  oppor- 
tunity for  autobiographising  that  he  makes 
such  use  of  in  the  above-named  books, 
there  can  be  no  reasonable  doubt. 

It  is  no  part  of  the  function  of  the  bio- 
grapher of  Homer  to  enter  upon  an  elabo- 

N 


178     The  Complete  Life  of  Hoiuer. 

rate  criticism  of  his  poems.  The  reader 
can  best  judge  of  their  merits  by  a  diligent 
study  of  them ;  but  I  could  not  forbear  a 
few  words  on  the  vital  question  of  their 
historical  truth.  Nor  can  I  forbear  saying 
something  also  on  a  point  where  he  has 
been  hardly  less  maligned.  Against  his 
morality  you  can  say  nothing  worse  than 
that  it  is  that  of  a  Dyak  of  Borneo.  It  is 
that  of  primeval  man  unenlightened,  but 
undepraved.  No  writer  has  depicted  the 
horrors  of  war,  more  feelingly,  or  with 
greater  force ;  and,  had  his  note  of  warning 
only  been  taken  to  heart,  Greece  might 
now  be  the  mistress  of  the  world,  instead 
of  being  the  smallest  of  European  powers. 

"  Bound  to  his  fellows  by  no  social  tie, 
An  outlawed  exile  may  he  wander  far ; 
And  him  may  hearth  and  altar  all  deny. 
That  loves  in  kindred  states  to  kindle  war." 

And  with  respect  to  slavery,  even  in  its 
mildest  form,  what  poet  has  written  better  ? 

*'  Accursed  slavery,  'ncath  thy  withering  chain, 
Of  virtue  but  the  shadow  doth  remain  ; 
For  manhood's  better  part  they  lack  that  do  ^ 
But  what  thy  stinging  lash  compels  them  to." 

In  a  word,  he  was  probably  as  far  superior 
to  his  age  as  he  could  have  been  to  influ- 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer.    179 

ence  it,— as  far  superior  as  in  his  miser- 
ably degraded  social  position  he  durst  or 
would  have  been  permitted  to  be— with  his 
boundless  hospitality,  unsuspecting  simpli- 
city, warm  attachment  to  kith  and  kin  and 
clan  and  country,  and  scorn  of  the  barbarian 
and  the  plebs,  a  Conservative,  perhaps,  but 
an  ideal  one. 

Had  he  lived  in  the  time  of  Aristophanes 

he  would  have  protested  with  him  against 

the  Peloponnesian  War ;  and  had  he  lived 

uiow,  he  would  have  protested  against  the 

wars  that  have  desolated  Europe  so  long. 

The  swine  of  Circe  are  the  beasts  in 
human  form  that  vexed  his  childhood  at 
Smyrna,  and  his  declining  years  at  Chios. 

The  first  line  of  the  "  Odyssey "  has 
never  yet  received  adequate  attention. 
Ei/vrTTc  (tell)  is  a  strong  contrast  to  ae/Ss 
(singX  in  the  first  line  of  the  ''  Iliad.''  In 
the  ''  Iliad ''  the  poet  says  ''  Sing, 
O  Goddess  !  "  In  the  ''  Odyssey,"  "  Tell' 
O  Muse  !  "  The  -  Iliad  "  was  designed 
entirely  for  recitation;  the  **  Odyssey " 
partly,  at  least,  if  not  even  principally,  for 
the  closet.  It  is  just  conceivable  that 
Homer  never  wrote  the  **  Iliad"  down 
after   all  ;    it    is  quite    possible   that  the 

N  2 


i8o    The  Complete  Life  of  Homer. 

*'  Odyssey  "  was  oftener  read  than  recited, 
even  in  the  poet's  own  lifetime. 

It  cannot  be  doubted  that  the  poet  was 
telling  his  own  tale,  as  well  as  that  of 
Ulysses,  where  he  says  : — 

"  Tell  me,  O  Muse  !  of  the  wise  one, 
Who,  wandering  the  wide  world  through. 
Saw  the  cities  of  many  peoples, 
And  their  manners  and  customs  knew, 
And  sorrows  many  upon  the  sea. 
In  his  heart  endured  that  patient  he."  * 

We  are  now  introduced  to  the  suitors, 
and  amongst  them  Telemachus,  a  faint 
foreshadowing  of  Shakespeare's  Hamlet, 
— "  his  closed  eyes  drawing  pictures  to 
his  soul  of  his  glorious  father  dashing  in 
and  scattering  the  cowardly  suitors  before 
him  like  frightened  hares,"t  and  "  Phe- 
mius  singing  amongst  the  suitors,  through 
necessity."!  Now  how  do  we  connect 
this  with  Homer?  Even  thus:  at  the 
enforced  departure  of  Maeon  and  the 
Amazons  from  Smyrna,  Homer  and  his  ill- 
fated  mother  lost  their  sole  protector.  She 

*  Odyss.,  i.  1-4.  t  Odyss.,  i.  115-116. 

\  Odyss.,  i.  154. 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer.    181 

was  now  exposed  a  helpless  prey  to  the 
coarse,  insolent  solicitations  of  a  set  of 
loafing  rowdies  from  all  parts  of  Hellas. 
Wretchedly  poor,  and  unprotected,  in  a 
garret  of  some  low  Smyrniot  slum  or  other, 
what  was  she  to  do  .'*  Appeal  to  their 
respect  for  a  lonely  woman's  honour,  when 
the  mere  existence  of  the  trembling  child 
beside  her  proved  that  she  had,  alas  !  for 
ever,  stained  its  virgin  whiteness  ^.  Fly  for 
shelter  to  her  friends,  when  she  had  not 
one  left  in  the  whole  world  ?    This  lasted 

four   whole   years,    and    then **  Four 

years  !"  cries  a  hypersceptical  opponent ;  **I 
have  studied  my  Homer  far  more  dili- 
gendy  than  you,  and  with  immeasurably 
vaster  appliances  and  means  to  boot  of 
scholia,  &c.,  and  I  find  no  such  thing." 
Because  you  have  never  once  looked  under 
the  surface  ;  because  you  have  never  once 
scratched  the  surface  with  your  nail. 
Therefore,  with  a  thousand  times  my  poor 
store  of  learning,  you  have  only  seen  one 
side  of  this  marvellous  poem.  Homer 
describes  a  dog  dying  of  disease,  the  con- 
sequence of  gross  neglect,  evidently  a  poor 
man's  dog,  evidently  his  own  dog.  And 
you  see  nothing  but  Ulysses's  dog,  a  king's 


i82     The  Complete  Life  of  Horner, 

dog.  A  dog  kept  by  Penelope  and  Tele- 
machus,  still  both  alive,  could  not  have  been 
thus  neglected  to  death,  but,  at  twenty-five 
would  far  more  likely  have  been  dying  of 
sheer  old  age,  of  which,  however,  our  poet 
lets  drop  not  one  syllable.  So  Telemachus 
speaks  of  his  doubtful  birth  in  language 
that  in  the  son  of  any  lawfully-married 
mother  would  be  most  unprincely,  nay, 
most  unbecoming  a  gentleman,  and  in  the 
son  of  the  chaste  Penelope  would  be  inap- 
propriate in  the  extreme  ;  and  you  do  not 
see  that  the  poet  is  speaking  in  only  too 
sober  earnest  of  his  own  most  dubious 
paternity.  So  here,  in  Book  II.,  11.  85-1 10, 
we  have  the  celebrated  story  of  Penelope's 
web,  that  reads  so  prettily  in  Homer, 
and  makes  such  a  pretty  picture  in  the 
National  Gallery.  But  when  we  apply  the 
critical  nail,  we  see  quite  a  different  story 
below  the  surface.  The  story,  as  we  have 
it,  is  as  grossly  improbable  as  anything 
not  physically  impossible  can  be.  That 
so  many  suitors,  elsewhere  so  artful^  should 
not  have  amongst  them  the  brains  of  some 
ridiculous  Welsh  giant,  should  allow  them- 
selves to  be  fooled  so  preposterously  for 
four  whole  years  together,   quite  exceeds 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer,     183 

all  the  limits  of  the  wildest  poetical  licence. 
But  we  may  fairly  take  the  four  years  to 
represent  the  period  between  the  departure 
of  Maeon  and  the  time  when  Kretheiswas 
driven  to  decide  upon  changing  her  state 
to  escape  from  the  dangerous  importunities 
of  these  unscrupulous  sons  of  Belial : — 

"  Flown  with  insolence  and  wine." 

Penelope's  web  was  some  device  by 
which  she  kept  them,  perhaps,  some  weeks, 
but  certainly  not  four  whole  years,  at  bay, 
till,  much  to  the  delight  of  the  little  Homer, 
she  was  rescued  from  them  by  the  honour- 
able proposals  of  Phemius.  But  what  is 
meant  by  Phemius's  **  singing  amongst 
them  by  necessity"  }  That  he  was  obliged 
to  earn  his  bread  in  this  way,  and  only 
after  long  delay  was  he  in  a  position  to 
offer  her  a  home.  And  during  this  period 
she  was  driven  to  many  miserable  shifts  to 
escape  from  their"  outrageous  bestiality. 
And  now  we  understand  why  Homer 
should  falsify  history  in  his  account  of  the 
'*  Death  of  the  Suitors."  History  informs 
us  that  Ulysses  and  his  companions  slew 
those  who  had  usurped  his  kingdom,  when 


1 84    The  Complete  Life  of  Homer. 

stupified  by  meat  and  wine.  But  this  does 
not  meet  our  poet's  autobiographical  views. 
He  looks  back  upon  the  detestable  way  in 
which  they  insulted  his  poor  mother,  and 
he  remembers,  to  his  dying  day,  her 
wrung  look  of  mingled  agony,  shame, 
disgust,  and  fear.     When  he  was 

''  A  little  boy  aged  ten," 

we   can   fancy    him,    like    litde    Tommy 
Merton,  crying  for  a  sword  to  run  through 
these  Thrasonical  braggarts  of  the  iEolian 
wars,    and     imagining    his    dear     father 
Dmasagoras's    return    from    Egypt,    and 
the  vengeance  dealt  by  the  equally  out- 
raged   husband    and    child    upon    these 
swinish   Alsatians.       Ulysses's  unsparing 
vengeance  appears  to  us  excessive,  nay, 
repulsive,  but  to  Homer  it  quite  evidently 
^does  not   appear  so.      It  is,  perhaps,  dif- 
ficult for  us  adequately   to  conceive  the 
dastardly  cruelty  with  which  these  lawless 
ruffians  may  have  taken  advantage  of  the 
lonely  woman's  fears  to  take  the  very  bread 
out  of  her  litde  child's  mouth,  and  drive 
her  to   the   very   verge  of  dishonesty  to 
her  employers,  and  the  streets  of  Smyrna 


I  • 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer.    185 

for  a  living.  And  Penelope,  very  love- 
able,  but  somewhat  weak,  is  evidently  a 
fine  picture  of  Kretheis. 

We  have  two  interesting  traits  of  our 
poet's  personal  character.  One  in  this 
book  : — 

"  Many  there  came  to  our  abode,  for  he 
Was  the  true  soul  of  hospitalitee,"  * 

says  Telemachus,  in  a  passage  harmonising 
very  closely  with  another  already  quoted 
(p.  145),  t  in  which  Homer  speaks  of  himself 
as  ministering  to  the  wants  of  the  wander- 
ing children  of  sorrow  in  the  days  of  his 
prosperity  as  principal  of  Minerva  House 
Academy,  Smyrna,  like  the  charming 
character  of  whom  Goldsmith  writes  in  his 
''  Deserted  Village  "  : — 

"  A  man  he  was  to  all  the  country  dear, 
And  passing  rich  on  forty  pounds  a  year." 

**  For  he  was  mild  as  a  father"  ('"Odyssey" 
ii.  47).  Hardly  Ulysses's  true  charac- 
ter, surely ! 

The  other,  when  Ulysses  speaks  like 

'*  Some  mute  inglorious  idiot  passion  fixt," 

*  Odyss.,  i.  176-7. 

-^  Cf.  also  Odyss.,  xix.  314-316. 


1 86    The  Complete  Life  of  Homer, 

as  Cowper  forcibly  translates  the  line,  we 
have  doubtless  a  description  of  our  poet's 
own  earnest  but  ungraceful  delivery. 

He  gives  his  audience  curiously  broad 
hints  on  the  nature  of  the  hospitality  due 
to  the  sacred  poet,  e,  g.,  when  Ulysses 
gives  the  bard  the  best  cut  of  the  chine, 
with  expressions  the  most  complimen- 
tary, *  and  where  Nestor  vows  he  will 
never  allow  the  son  of  Ulysses  to  sleep  on 
the  hard  mast-planks  of  the  ship  as  long  as 
he  has  a  bed  to  offer  him  ;t  and  various 
other  passages,  wherein  he  shows  his 
high  conception  of  his  sacred  function,  and 
his  own  warm-hearted  hospitality  that 
must  have  made  him  doubly  susceptible  to 
the  cold,  grudging  hospitality  of  others. 

He  makes  no  claim  to  descent  from 
Danaus.  This  Pausanias  thinks  an  over- 
sight ;  I  do  not.  An  usher  at  a  cheap 
boarding-school  boasting  of  his  lineal 
descent  from  William  the  Conqueror  cuts 
but  a  sorry  figure ;  and  our  poet  boasting 
of  his  from  more  gods  than  one,  as  he 
chawed  his  eleemosynary  bacon,  would 
have  cut  an  even  sorrier  appearance. 


Odyss.,  viii.  474-481. 


t  Odyss.,  iii.  352-355. 


CHAPTER  V. 


HIS    DATE. 

It  is  evident  that  the  school  of  Apollo- 
dorus,  in  giving  Homer  a  date  of  240 
years  and  more  after  the  Fall  of  Troy, 
has  confounded  the  elder  Homer  with  the 
younger  one.  So  late  a  date  is  indeed 
absolutely  irreconcilable  with  the  fact  that 
Lycurgus  saw  the  author  s  own  copy  of 
the  "  Iliad  "  in  the  possession  of  the  pos- 
terity of  Creophylus. 

Nor  is  the  school  of  Crates,  that  gives 
a  date  of  less  than  a  hundred  years  after 
the  Fall  of  Troy,  a  whit  nearer  the  truth. 
"But  we  gather,"  say  they,  ''from  his 
works  that  he  wrote  not  very  long  after 
the  Fall  of  Troy,  and  certainly  before 
the  return  of  the  Heracleids."  We  gather 
no  such  thing  :  we  gather  quite  the 
contrary.  The  praise  given  to  Phemius 
in  the    '*  Odyssey''  proves    nothing.      It 


1 88     The  Complete  Life  of  Homer. 

is   a  merely   flattering   eulogy   upon    the 
more  father  than  Phoenix  of  teachers  that 
watered  the  tender  bud  of  song  and  de- 
lighted  the   boy-poet   with   old    tales   of 
Troy.     Visiting  Troy  at  the  end  of  his 
travels  he  sees  remains  of  Troy,  but  none 
of  the  Greek  encampment ;  hence  his  re- 
marks thereupon.      These    two  passages 
prove   nothing  whatever  either   way,  but 
all  the  rest  is  in  favour  of  a  late  date. 
Poseidon's  prophecy  concerning  the  rule 
of  iEneas  and  his  son  and  his  son's  son 
chanced,  as  we  have  seen,  to  be  literally 
fulfilled,  even  as  was  Dido's  exactly  parallel 
prophecy  of  the    Punic   Wars.      But   as 
Virgil  lived  long  after  the  Punic  Wars  so 
did  Homer  after  the  capture  of  Troy  by 
the  Amazons.  Had  he  written  his  ''  Iliad" 
before  1 127  B.C.  under  the  rule,  say,  of  the 
third  and  last  i^neas,  he  might  have  ven- 
tured upon  the  prophecy.     But  this  view, 
that  he  sang  so  soon  after  the  Fall  of  Troy 
is  wholly  irreconcileable  with  the   "  Iliad," 
ii.  486  ;  but  if  he  wrote  after  1 127  B.C.,  he 
would  certainly  have  qualified  his  prophecy 
had  not  the  facts  been  mellowed  to  the 
right  point  of  venerable  obscurity  by  the 
lapse  of  time.     The  prophecy  is  obviously 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer.     189 

written  by  one  that  was  not  aware  that 
only  three  generations  of  ^neadae  reigned 
in  the  Troad,  but  believed  that  they 
reigned  for  an  indefinite  period.  When  a 
prophet  means  three  times,  neither  more 
nor  less,  he  writes  very  differently  (see  2 
Kings  xiii.  18,  19). 

Again,  Nestor's  **  Laudatio  temporis 
acti  "  is  paralleled  with  Homers.  But 
nothing  can  be  more  dissimilar.  Achilles 
was  certainly  greater  than  Peleus,  Aga- 
memnon than  Atreus,  Diomedes  than 
Tydeus,  Sthenelus  than  Capaneus.  "  We 
are  far  better  men  than  our  sires,"  quoth 
the  last  of  these;  and  Homer,  beyond 
all  doubt,  smiles  over  his  spirited  por- 
trayal of  this  natural  infirmity  of  age.  But 
what  Homer  says  is  very  different.  We 
all  at  fifty,  like  Nestor,  give  the  preference 
to  our  own  generation  over  the  succeeding 
one.  "  The  boys  are  spoilt,  the  girls  no 
longer  marry  for  love,  the  stage  is  mere 
scene-painting,  the  clowns  can  do  nothing 
but  jump  about."  But  none  of  us  are  so 
absurd  as  to  imagine  that  Tom  Brown, 
when  we  were  young  fellows,  could  lift  a 
mass  with  ease  that  two  lads  now-a-days 
cannot  so  much  as  stir.     But  this  is  just 


iQO    The  Complete  Life  of  Ho77icr. 

what  Homer  says  of  his  heroes.  How  so  ? 
Because  he  believed  that  with  the  Trojan 
War  the  race  of  heroes  died  out,  and  an 
entirely  different  race  of  men  succeeded. 
Now  this  is  a  phase  of  belief  that  nothing 
but  a  considerable  lapse  of  time  renders 
possible.  However  we  may  revere  our 
fathers  and  grandfathers,  as  we  grow  old 
like  them,  we  cannot  but  see  that,  physi- 
cally speaking,  they  were  much  like  our- 
selves at  the  same  age.  Only  a  generation 
of  which  we  have  no  personal  knowledge, 
and  of  which  none  we  ever  conversed  with 
had,  can  we  think  wholly  different  from 
ourselves  as  Homer  thought  his  heroes. 
He  would  not  have  written, — 

"  Many  sons  of  the  gods  fight  round  Priam's  great 
city," 

had  his  father  or  grandfather,  or  even 
great-grandfather  been  there.  Mermerus, 
the  grandson  of  Medea,  flourished  as  a 
hoary-headed  magician,  and  Ulysses  came 
to  his  untimely  end  on  the  sea-shore  some 
thirty  years  after  the  great  quarrel  between 
Achilles  and  Agamemnon.  And  at  least 
a  century  elapsed  between  the  return  of 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer,     191 

Ulysses  and  the  youthful  exploits  of  the 
vain-glorious  Nestor  and  the  other  pre- 
vious matters  referred  to  in  the  "Iliad" 
as  falling  well  within  that  hero's  lifetime  : 
and  our  poet  is  all  out  in  his  chronological 
perspective  if  he  was  born  in  the  lifetime 
of  the  hero  of  the  ''  Odyssey,"  or  less  than 
a  century  at  least  after  the  Fall  of  Troy. 

^  Again,  when  Homer  speaks  of  Crete  in 
his  own  person  he  calls  it  hundred-citied  ; 
when  he  speaks  of  it  in  the  person  of 
Ulysses,  he  calls  it  ninety-citied, — a  clear 
allusion  to  the  Dorian  immigration,  about 
sixty  years  after  the  return  of  the  Hera- 
cleids.  Similarly  he  calls  Corinth  Ephyre 
when  his  heroes  speak,  and  Corinth  (a 
name  it  can  only  have  acquired  at  or  after 
the  Dorian  conquest)  when  he  speaks 
himself.  The  most  interesting  case  of 
this  double  nomenclature  is  contained  in 
those  celebrated  lines  : — 


"  Which  men  call  Batieia,  but  immortals 
The  tomb  of  Myrina  the  Amazon." 

Meaning  to  say  that  in  the  time  of  Priam 
it  was  called  Batieia,  from  the  daughter  of 
Teucer,  the  ancestress  of  his  race ;  but  in 


192    The  Complete  Life  of  Homer. 

Homers  time,  long  after  the  capture  of 
Trov  by  the  Amazons,  the  supposed 
monument  of  Myrina,  one  of  the  greatest 
of  their  queens,  was  to  be  seen  there. 
Now  this  indicates  a  period  very  long 
subsequent  to  that  capture.  So  the  Myie 
of  Priam  disappeared,  and  was  replaced  by 
Neonteichos  {1007  B.C.) ;  and  the  poet  on 
leaving  that  place  at  once  immortalised 
his  benefactor,  and  affixed  the  date  and 
place  of  his  birth  to  his  work. 

Homer  again  states  that  the  Boeotians 
occupied  Boeotia  11 53  B.C. ;  but  it  is  clear 
from  Thucydides  that  they  migrated  from 
Thessaly  1123  B.C.  This  glarmg  ana- 
chronism,  of  course,  clearly  proves  that 
our  poet  must  have  written  long  after  the 

latter  date.  ^^  , 

Homer's  fondness  for  Nestor  also  proves 
him  to  have  written  after  the  Neleid 
Apoecia,  as  does  also  his  use  of  demos  and 
archoi,  as  applied  to  Athens. 

Besides,  towards  the  close  of  the 
"  Odyssey,"  that  is,  the  end  of  his  lite, 
when  his  knowledge  of  European  Greece 
had  become  much  enlarged,  he  speaks  ot 
the  Dorian  immigrants  as  opposed  to  the 
native  Cretans,  and  calls  them  the  three- 


The  CojHplete  Life  of  Homer,    193 

fold  people,  which  shows  that  he  wrote 
after  the  Dorian  conquest.  As  does  also 
his  mention  in  the  *'  Hymn  to  Apollo"  of 
Knidos,  the  capital  of  the  Dorian  Hexa- 
polis.  And  the  variation  in  his  name, — in 
all  probability,  the  original  spelling  of  it, 
Melissigenes, — shows  that  he  was  born 
after  the  Neleid  Apoecists  had  given  its 
present  name  to  the  Meles. 

Lastly,  Homer's  belief  in  the  literal 
truth  of  the  legend  of  the  **  Wooden 
Horse'*  proves  him  to  have  lived  long 
after  the  siege.  This  Palsephatus  saw, 
and  we  may  plainly  see,  was  a  mere 
poliorcetic  stratagem  by  which  the  Greeks 
were  admitted  into  the  city  under  cover  of 
night  and  a  pretence  of  raising  the  siege 
and  withdrawing,  and  by  means  of  a  com- 
plicated web  of  fratricidal  treachery.  On 
further  reading,  however,  Dares's  expla- 
nation of  the  modus  operandi  commends 
itself  more  to  my  judgment  than  that  of 
Palaephatus.  He  says  ''  Polydamas"  (one 
of  the  traitors  within  the  walls)  **  recom- 
mends them  "  (Agamemnon  and  the  rest 
of  the  twenty-three)  '*to  bring  their  army 
by  night  to  the  Scsean  gate,  zvhere  there 
was   a   horse  s  head  carved  outside,    and 

o 


194    The  Complete  Life  of  Homer, 

there  keep  watch/'  &c.*  Still  there  Is 
an  element  of  truth,  no  doubt,  in  the 
account  of  Paleephatus  also.  The  meta- 
morphosis of  Cadmus  and  Harmonia  into 
snakes  is  a  case  of  a  very  similar  kind. 
Dying  in  exile  amongst  the  Enchelyes 
(Eels),  a  people  of  Illyria,  two  eels  the 
device  of  that  people,  were  sculptured  on 
their  grave.  And  in  process  of  time  the 
eels  were  very  naturally  taken  for  snakes  ; 
and  Cadmus  and  Harmonia  were  fabled 
to  have  been  turned  not  into  eels,  as  in  a 
sense  they  really  were,  but  into  snakes. 

Nor  would  he  have  deified  the  mother 
of  Achilles  had  he  lived  so  near  her  time. 
A  genuine  apotheosis,  of  which  this  was 
the  very  last  in  Hellenic  annals,  of  course, 
took  time.  Even  the  minor  honour  of 
canonisation  is  not  conferred,  I  believe,  in 
less  than  a  century  after  death  at  the  very 

least. 

The  two  extreme  dates,  then,  having 
been  alike  clearly  disproved,  which  of  the 
four  intermediate  dates  appears  the  most 
probable,— that  of  Aristotle,  Aristarchus 
and  Castor  (1043  B.C.),  that  of  Ephorus 

•  Dares,  ''Excidium  Trojse,"  cap.  xl. 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer,    195 

and  Archilochus  ( 1 056  b.c.  ),  that  of  SoHnus, 
Tatian,  Clemens  Alexandrinus,  and  Alla- 
tius  (1003  B.C.),  or  that  of  Cassius,  Philo- 
stratus,  Philochorus,  and  Cyril  (10 15  b.c.)  ? 
It  is  only  reasonable  to  give  the  pre- 
ference to  dates  when  backed  by  detail  to 
dates  that  stand  alone;  it  is,  therefore,  only 
reasonable  to  give  the  preference  to  No.  r 
and  No.  4  over  Nos.  2  and  3  ;  and,  again, 
it  is  a  fortiori  only  reasonable  to  give  the 
preference  to  a  date  backed  by  perfectly 
reasonable  and  probable  details  to  a  date 
backed  by  perfectly  mythological,  super- 
natural, and  impossible  details  ;  it  is,  there- 
fore, only  reasonable  to  prefer  No.  4  to 
No.  I,  and  therefore,  a  foi^tiori,  to  the 
other  two. 

But  besides  all  this,  we  must  needs 
object  to  the  third  (that  of  those  who 
advocate  Colophon  as  the  native  city  of 
our  poet,  1003  B.C.),  for  the  following  all- 
sufficient  reasons  :— (i.)  It  makes  him  out 
a  Lydo-Amazon,  the  thing  he  most  of  all 
abhorred.  His  treatment  of  Diana,  the 
patron  goddess  of  the  Amazons  and  of 
Mars  their  ancestor,  proves  this.  (2.)  It 
makes  him  out  to  have  been  born  at 
Colophon.      But    even    Antimachus   and 

o  2 


196     The  Complete  Life  of  Homer. 

Nicander  only  claim  him  as  a  Colopho- 
nian  in  the  sense  that  they  themselves 
were  so  ;  and  Mimnermus,  Xenophanes, 
and  Hermesianax,  though  all  three  Colo- 
phonians,  do  not  claim  him  at  all.  No 
one,  so  far  as  I  am  aware,  asserts  that  he 
was  born  at  Colophon.  , 

But  whilst  the  advocates  of  the  claim  ot 
Colophon  put   Homer  too  late,  Aristotle 
and  his  school  (for  the  directly  contrary 
reason)  put  him  a  little  too  early,  so  as  to 
make  out  that  the  Athenians  themselves 
colonised  Smyrna  at  the  Apoecia,  and  not 
Lydian    refugees    from     Ephesus,    some 
twelve  years  before,  and  ^olic  immigrants 
from  Cyme  and  elsewhere  some  thirty-six 
years  after.     But  this   date  also  we  must 
reject  for  the  reasons  already  adduced,  and 
also   for   the  followinor :  (i)  the  palpable 
motive  ;  (2)  the  suspicion  attaching  to  a 
date  so  artfully  attached  to  an  event  so 
prominent;  (3)  the  gross  improbability  of 
the  whole  story  ;  (4)  its  distinct  contradic- 
tion, as  we  have  seen,  of  Aristotle's  own 
more  sober  conclusion. 

It  strikes  me  forcibly  that  the  story 
in  Aristotle,  of  the  girl  running  off  to 
Goat's  Bay,  and  there  being  earned  oti  by 


Tlie  Complete  Life  of  Horner ,    197 

pirates  to  Smyrna,  is  simply  taken  from 
Eumaeus's  story,  in  the  15th  book  of  the 
*'  Odyssey"  (11.  415-482),  of  the  daughter 
of  Arybas  running  off  with  the  Phoenician 
sea-wolves  after  being  seduced  by  one  of 
them.  If  we  only  suppose  her  with  child 
(and  as  they  had  been  at  the  island  a 
whole  year,  why  not  .^),  and  further  sup- 
pose Syrie,  with  its  two  cities,  to  be  the 
same  as  Phcenice  [los]  with  its  two  cities, 
los  and  Aigina  (and,  again,  why  not  .'^ 
Recollect,  to  an  Ithacan  los  was  above,  and 
Syrie  below  Delos),  and  the  stories  are 
identical ;  only  in  Homer  the  woman  dies 
at  sea.  Just  as  Homer  probably  took  his 
story  of  the  dog  Argus,  so  he  may  have 
taken  the  story  of  the  daughter  of  Arybas 
from  contemporary,  or  nearly  contempo- 
rary, actual  fact.  The  story  in  Aristotle 
may,  then,  be  that  of  Homer  slightly 
modified,  and  may  have  taken  place  about 
1044,  ^'^'^11  i^  the  boy  and  girl  memory  of 
Homer  s  maternal  grandmother,  Clymene, 
and  great-uncle  and  namesake,  Homer  of 
Smyrna.  N.B.,  of  Smyr^ia,  But  the 
heroine  of  the  story  was  most  certainly 
not  Homer's  mother  or  any  near  con- 
nexion of  his. 


198     The  Complete  Life  of  Homer, 

But  the  date  of  1015  B.C.  is  altogether 
unexceptionable,  for  the  following  most 
all-sufficient  reasons  : — 

(i.)   130  years  after  the   expedition  to 
Troy,  which  Agamemnon  and    Menelaus 
led,  Lesbos,  which  before  had  none,  was 
built   all  over  with  cities.      And  twenty 
years  after  the  colonisation  of  Lesbos  by 
the  Cohans,   under   Penthilus,  Cyme  in 
iEolis,— in  ^olis,    mind,    not    Cumce   in 
Italy,— which  is  also  called  Phriconis,  was 
founded.     And  eighteen  years  after  Cyme, 
Smyrna  was  founded  by  the  Cymaeans,  and 
in  it  Homer  was  born.      In  other  words, 
Homer   was    born    168   years    after    the 
Fall  of  Troy.*      But  this  great  cardinal 
fact,  combined  with  the  Herodotean  date 
of  the  Fall  of  Troy,  gives  the  false  date 
of   Chares    and    the    pseudo-Herodotus. 
Combined  with  the  true  date  of  the  first 
siege  of  Troy  by  Hercules,  it  gives  us  the 
false  date  of  Aristotle.      Combined  with 
the  false  date   of  Sosibius  (1171  b.c.),^  it 
gives  us  the  false  date  of  Solinus  Tatian 
and  Allatius.      Combined   with   the  true 
date  of  the  Amazonian  capture  of  Troy 

♦  Westermann's  "Lives,"  p.  20. 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer,    199 

(1127  B.C.),  it  gives  us  that  of  our  good 
old  friend,  '*  Whittaker 's  Almanack,"  p.  80; 
the  accredited  date,  when  I  was  a  boy, 
about  960  B.C.  But  all  this  only  proves 
the  vital  importance  of  the  168  years  as 
an  element  in  the  calculation  and  the  great 
probability  of  the  Homeric  date  (1015  b.c.) 
obtained  by  combining  the  true  date  of 
the  siege  of  Troy  therewith.  For  this 
alo7ie  rests  tipon  a  well-made-out  series  of 
historical  events,  which  fione  of  the  rest  even 
pretend  to  do. 

But  those  that  deny  that  Homer  was 
born  168  years  after  the  Fall  of  Troy,  and 
was  not  born  in  the  archonship  of  Acastus 
at  all,  confound  the  true  Homer  with  a 
false  one.  Thus,  Ephorus,  in  stating  that 
Homer  was  born  127  years  after  the  Fall 
of  Troy,  in  the  archonship  of  Medon, 
1056  B.C.,  confounds  him  with  Homer  of 
Cyme.  Apollodorus  and  his  school,  in 
stating  that  he  was  born  240  years  after 
the  Fall  of  Troy,  in  the  archonship  of 
Phorbas,  confound  him  with  Homer  the 
younger, — the  mistake  made  by  all  chron- 
ologists  after  that  eminent  writer  down 
to  Blair,  and  Townsend,  and  Whittaker. 
Crates  and  his  school,  that  make  him  born 


200    The  Complete  Life  of  Homer. 

about  the  return  of  the  Heracleids,  when 
Athens  was  ruled,  not  by  archons,  but 
by  kings,  confound  him  with  Homer  of 
Smyrna  ;  while,  directly  contrary  to  Crates, 
Theopompus,  by  making  him  born  m  the 
reign  of  Gyges,  500  years  after  the  Fall  of 
Troy,  confounds  him  with  some  msigni- 
ficant  Homerid  of  Chios, —the  eighth 
Homer  of  the  pseudo-Archilochus, — of 
whom  we  know  nothing  whatever.  ^ 

(2.)  As  the  lans  must  have  known  their 
own   great  date   of  dates,    if  not   by  the 
tombstone  that  Homer  H.   set  up,  or  by 
their    own    venerable   archives,    at   least 
traditionally  ;    and  as  Aristotle,  from  the 
very  nature  of  his  supernatural  myth,  must 
also  have  known  that  date,  and  by  adding 
Homer's  age  at  death,  obtained   1044  B.C., 
as  the  date  of  his  birth,  and  as  the  Hero- 
dotean  account,  which  represents  him  as 
only    moderately   old  at  death,    gives  us 
1015   B.C.  as  the  date  of  his  birth,  it  fol- 
lows that  Aristotle  must  have  made  him 
immoderately  old  (ninety  to  wit),  asSolinus, 
Tzetzes,  and  Cramer  have  it,  to  obtain  his 
own  Phil-Athenian  date  of  birth,— 1044  B.C. 
And    hence,    furthermore,    it    necessarily 
follows,  beyond  all  reasonable  controversy, 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer.    201 

that  our  date  of  birth  (differing  from  his 
only  by  assigning  a  more  reasonable  age 
at  death),  must  be  the  date. 

(3.)  It  satisfies  the  weighty  statements 
of  Philochorus.*  Philochorus  says  :  — 
"  Homer  nourished  (TjxjDiaxs)  in  the  archon- 
ship  of  Archippus,  forty  years  after  the  Ionic 
Apoecia,  180  years  after  the  Fall  of  Troy." 
However  we  interpret  the  word  r^xfjLaxs^ 
not  one  of  the  other  dates  satisfies  more 
than  one  at  most  of  the  three  statements 
contained  in  the  above  quotation.  But 
this  satisfies  them  all  with  the  most 
startling  accuracy.  H^joiaxs  —  he  was 
called,  like  Christ  and  Samuel ;  he  changed 
his  name  like  Abraham  ;  he  first  received 
the  sacred  and  immortal  name  of  Homer 
from  his  celebrated  ''homou"  (''and  me 
too"),  when  he  spoke  '' semi-divinely "  at 
the  commencement  of  the  great  Colophon- 
ian  war,  being  now  about  twelve  years  old 
in  the  year  1003  i^-C,  in  the  eleventh  year 
of  the  archonship  of  Archippus,  exactly 
forty  years  after  the  Ionic  Apoecia,  and 
exactly  180  years  after  the  Fall  of  Troy. 
He  also  *'  flourished  "  in  another  sense,  just 


Baletta's  "  Life  of  Homer,"  p.  30. 


202     The  Complete  Life  of  Homer, 

at  the  close  of  Archippus's  archonship, 
995  B.C.,  when  the  melodious  Swan  of  the 
Meles  first  began  to  sing  in  its  sequestered 
caves.* 

The  only  other  date  that  can  possibly 
be  twisted  so  as  to  satisfy  the  above  crucial 
statement,  is  1003  B.C.,  and  our  date  is 
obviously  far  superior  to  that :  (i.)  In  that 
it  rests  on  a  reasonable,  but  that  on  a  most 
7^;^reasonable,  interpretation  of  r^xfjiaxs ;  for 
how  can  "he  flourished"  mean  "he  was 
born"?  (2.)  In  that,  seeing  it  is  admitted 
on  all  hands  that  Charidemus  took,  and 
that  the  Solids  settled  at  Cyme  1033  B.C., 
it  is  more  decent,  more  charitable  to  the 
memory  of  poor  Kretheis,  and  much  more 
in  accordance  with  natural  probability  and 
the  Herodotean  story,  to  suppose  that 
Kretheis  was  seduced  at  the  tender  age  of 
seventeen  (10 16  B.C.),  than  at  the  ripe  age 
of  thirty  (1004  e.g.),  when  she  was  certainly 
old  enough  to  know  better.  But  the  date 
1003  being  obtained  by  adding  90, 
supposed  age  at  death,  to  913,  supposed 
date  of  interment,  is  really  a  compound  of 
two  most  signal  errors. 

•  Westermann's  "  Lives,"  p.  4. 


T/ie  Complete  Life  of  Homer,    203 

(4.)  It  satisfies  the  element  of  truth  in 
every  author.  If  born  1015  b.c.  Homer 
was  born  in  the  archonship  of  Acastus,  as 
Euthymenes  says  ;  at  the  very  close  of  it, 
as  the  opponents  of  Euthymenes  say  ;  in 
the  year  when  the  archonship  of  Archippus 
began,  according  to  the  full  force  of  the 
statement  of  the  venerable  Philochorus. 

(5.)   Hesiod  knew  most  distinctly,  as  I 
have  shown  in  Chapter  IX.,  that  Hesiod 
and  a  Homer  flourished   in   the  time  of 
the    Lycurgus   whilst   he  was   viceroy  of 
Sparta.*       He    also    knew,   I    infer,  that 
the     Homer      was      born      during     the 
minority  of  Labotas.f     Hence  two  fright- 
ful blunders  of  his  :   (i)  that  the  Lycurgus 
was   guardian  of  Labotas,J— a  Lycurgus 
or   a  somebody   whose    name   resembled 
that   great    man  s    may  have  been  ;    (2) 
that  the  Homer  was  a  contemporary  of  the 
Lycurgus,  whose  date  he  knew  to  be  three 
centuries  after  the  Fall  of  Troy,  and  four 
centuries  before  his  own  birth.     But  if  we 
separate   his    data,   we   obtain    the   exact 
truth  therefrom.      According  to  the  date 


*  Herodotus,  ii.  53.  f  Herodotus,  i.  65. 

X  Paus.,  iii.  2,  §  3. 


204     The  Complete  Life  of  Ho7ne7\ 

of   Eusebius,*    Labotas's    nominal    reign 
began   102 1,  and  Homer  was  born  in  his 
minority, — 10 15,  or  thereabouts.   As,  then, 
in  Aristotle  and  the  rest,  so  in  Herodotus, 
we  see  how  one  mistake  involved  another. 
(6.)  Lastly,  let  us  once  more  briefly  run 
over  the  history  of  Homer's  family,  and  we 
shall  see  how  well  the  date  of    10 15   or 
10 1 4   fits    in.     Kretheus  begat  two  sons 
by  two  different  women,  Orsilochus   and 
Neleus.     Orsilochus  had   a  son.    Diodes, 
fondly    attached,   as    we    learn  from    the 
*'  Odyssey,"    to    his    half-cousin,   Nestor. 
Diodes  had  two  sons,  one    of  whom  he 
named  Krethon,  from  his  illustrious  great- 
grandsire  ;  the  other  Orsilochus,  from  his 
grandfather.  They  were  both  killed  in  the 
year  11 84  B.C.     But  Krethon  left  a  boy, 
Ithagenes,  who,   as    we   know    from    the 
etymon  of  his  name,  as  already  explained, 
was  born  1 192  B.C.,  in  the  first  year  of  the 
war.     His  son,   Kretheus  (mentioned    in 
Virgil  as  a  companion  of  -^Eneas,  z.^.,  as 
already  explained    of   ^neas   H.),    went 
with  that  hero  to   Italy  after  the  capture 
of  Troy  by  the  Amazons,  1127.     He  left 

♦  Chronicon,  i.  320. 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer,    205 

a  son,  in  whom  he  revived  his  great- 
grandfather's claim  to  the  blood  of  his 
great-grandfather,  Kretheus  I. — Krethon, 
that  is,  the  descendant  of  Kretheus  (just 
as  Deucalion,  of  Crete,  was  the  descendant 
of  Deucalus,  and  yEolion  of  Lesbos,  the 
descendant  of  ^olus), — Krethon  H.,  the 
great-grandson  of  Krethon  L,  who,  in  his 
turn,  was  the  great-grandson  of  Kretheus 
himself.  This  Kretheus  may  reasonably 
be  supposed  to  have  been  born  about 
1 135,  and  to  have  had  a  son,  Ithagenes, 
born  in  his  father's  absence,  doing  des- 
perate battle  with  the  Amazons,  now  in  the 
zenith  of  their  power,  and  threatening  to 
overthrow  all  Western  Asia,  1105  B.C. 
His  son,  Melanopus,  would  be  born  about 
1075,  and,  marrying  apparently  rather  late 
in  life,  in  1033,  was  the  father  of  a 
daughter  who  bore  Homer  in  1015  or 
1014  B.C. 


STEMMA  HOMERICUM. 
A  MATRE. 


Inachus 

Phoroneus 

Apis  (by  incest  with  sister) 

Argos 

lasus  r. 


2o6     The  Complete  Life  of  Homer, 


I 

2 

3 

4 

5 
6 


Deucalion  * 

Hellent 

iEolus  I. 

Mimas:!: 

Hippotes 

A\o\m%  II.§ 

Neleus 

I 
Kretheus  I.  had  by      .        • 

Orsilochus 

Diodes 

Krethon  I. 

Ithagenes  I.  (born  1 192) 

Kretheus     II.    (went     with 

^neas  II.  to  Italy  1127) 

7  Krethon  11. 

8  Ithagenes  II.  (married  Mela- 

nope,  descended  from 
Clymene  I.,  attendant  of 
Helen  and  Melanippus,  of 
Percote) 


9  Melanopus,  married  . 

10  Clymene    III.    (so    named 

from  her  mother),  alias 
Melanope  (so  named  from 
her  father  and  grand- 
mother), alias  Kretheis 
(so  named  from  her  great 
ancestor,  Kretheus  I.), 
born  1033.  2.  Has  by 
Dmasagoras,  or  Mceon,  or 
Kleanax) 

11  Homer,  so  named  from  his 

great  -  uncle  and  great- 
great  -  great  -  grandfather 


lo 

Epaphus 

Libya 

Belus 

Danaus 

Philodameia 

Pharis 


Telegone 


Homer  I.  (of  Smyrna  born 
according  to  Crates,  about 
1104  r..c.) 

O  my  res  ** 

(i)  Homer  II.  (of  C>'me, born 
according  to  Ephorus, 
1056  B.C.,  and  plainly 
identical  with  the  pseudo- 
Archilochus's  Homer). 

(2)  Clymene  H. 
Clymene  II. 


♦  Odyss.,  xix.  181.        t  11-.  "•  683,  &c.        X  Odyss.,  iii.  172, 
§  Odyss,,  X.  2,  36,  II  Great-grand-daughter  of  Danaus, 

\  See  Paus.,  iv.  30,  s.  2.  **  "  Lives,"  p,  i. 


The  Complete  Life  of  Home7\    207 


(marries  Eurydice  II.,* 
probably  a  descendant  of 
Nestor  and  Eurydice  I., 
from  whom  she  derives 
her  name.  As  a  descen- 
dant of  Telemachus,  by 
their  daughter  Polycaste, 
she  would  naturally  stimu- 
late our  poet  to  write  his 
"  Odyssey";  by  her  he  had) 

12  Arsiphone   (married    Kreo- 

phylus,  the  elder) 

13  Terpander  (of  Phoccca) 

14  Gnotor  (of  Cyme) 

15  Arsiphone  II.  married   ,     . 

16  Euryphon,  or  Euphron  and 

Theolaus 


Homer  IV.  (the  son  of  Euphron 
the  Phocian),f 


N.B. — The  intricate  stemvia  of  Homer  II,  ivill  be  found  in  a 
subsequent  chapter^ 

STEMMA  HOMERICUM 

A  PATRE. 
Amythaon 

1  Melampus 

2  Abas  (surnamed  Mantius) 

3  Cceranus 

4  Polypheides  % 

5  Theoclymenus  (unmarried  1173) 

6  Telemachus  § 

7  Peisenor 

8  Ops  II  (Cleitus)"^ 

9  Euryclea,  marries      .         .         .       lasus  II.  (an  Inachid) 
10  Dmasagoras  (unmarried    1015    h.c,    subsequently  marries 

^■Ethra,  a  descendant  of  /Ethra,  Helen's  attendant) 


*  An  obvious  pseudonym.  Of  course,  she  got  called  so. 
Query,  is  it  so  obvious?  f  The  **  Lives,"  p.  47. 

X  Cf  Odyss.,  XV.  249.  §  See  p.  253. 

II  Odyss,,  i.  429,  and  elsewhere. 

nr  Paus.,  i.  43.  §  5  ;  II- ,  XV.  445,  with  which  cf  Odyss.,  xv. 
250,  251. 


2o8     The  Complete  Life  of  Homer, 

II  Homer  I. 

15  Homer  H.,  flourished  884  B.C. 

lb  Euphron  (emigrated  to  Arne,  leaving  his  brother,  Theolaus, 
President  of  the  Homeridse  at  Chios) 

17  Phoceus  (said  to  have  been  son  of  Homer,  though  grand- 

son, just  as  Agamemnon  was  called  Atreides,  though  the 
son  of  Pleisthenes) 

18  Boeus 

19  Derdeneus  *  (Query,  Dardaneus) 

20  Terpander,t    so-called    from    his    ancestor     of     Phocxa, 

flourished  708  B.C. 

The  period  between  Homer  the  younger 
and  his  descendant,  Terpander,  was  one 
of  great  literary  activity.  In  it  flourished 
Archilochus  727  B.C.,  CalHnus,  a  httle 
before,  Cinsethon  765  B.C.,  and  Arctinus 
and  Lesches  contended  about  the  time  of 
the  First  Olympiad, — query,  in  honour  of 
the  quatercentenary  of  the  Fall  of  Troy, 
783  B.C.  ?  Shortly  after  which,  in  all 
probability,  Lesches  wrote  his  most 
pleasant  and  ingenious  **  Agon."  Earlier 
still  were  Stasinus  and  Hegesinus,  and, 
as  I  infer  from  the  Borghese  tablet, 
Telesis,  of  Methymna.. 

Such  is  our  poet's  truly  extraordinary 
stemma  on  both  the  father's  and  the 
mother's  side.  James  I.,  in  a  letter 
to  Burghley, — Burghley,  the  oppressor 
to  the  death  of  Spenser;  Burghley,  the 


*  Parian  Marble,  34. 


t  Suidas,  art.  "Terpander." 


T/ic  Complete  Life  of  Homer,    209 

Polonius  of  Shakespeare— calls  our  poet 
**one  beggarly  writing  fellow."  Would 
he  have  called  him  so,  I  wonder,  had  he 
known  that  the  noblest  blood  on  earth  ran 
in  his  veins,  hat-in-hand,  blind  beggar  as 
he  was  'i 

Thus,  look  which  way  we  will,  it  is 
impossible  not  to  see  that  the  reasons  for 
admitting  the  date  of  1015  B.C.  are  over- 
whelmingly strong.  Stronger  reasons  at 
such  a  distance  of  time  it  is  surely  most 
unreasonable  to  look  for. 

Two  more  remarks  whilst  we  have  the 
Homeric  stemma  before  us.  We  have 
seen  our  poet's  childlike  simplicity  in  his 
singing  songs  for  fieldfares  to  the  boys, 
and  going  round  from  house  to  house 
singing  for  half-pence,  and  in  the  miser- 
able price  he  put  upon  the  priceless 
treasures  of  his  art— a  farthing's  worth  of 
fieldfares,  a  clay-pipkin,  a  bed  and  supper. 
Bed  and  board  was  all  he  ever  asked  for, 
and  it  was  all  he  ever  got— the  bed  and 
board  of  a  ragged,  half-starved  mendicant. 
We  have  seen,  too,  that  this  childlike 
simplicity  was  combined  with  a  touchino- 
confidingness  no  less  childlike.  We  have 
seen  how  he  let  Creophylus  take  advantage 

p 


2IO     The  Complete  Life  of  Homer. 

of  his  blindness  to  cheat  him  out  of  the 
best  pieces  at  dinner ;  we  have  seen  how 
he  let  Thestorides  take  advantage  of  his 
blindness  to  cheat  him  out  of  all  his 
poetry.  And  when  he  found  out  at  last 
that  he  had  been  imposed  upon,  he  could 
hardly  believe  it  possible,  and  was  utterly 
astonished.   "  Oh,  Thestorides  !  "  cried  he, 

«'  Of  all  earth's  riddles  passing  hard  to  find, 
None  mock  all  guessing  like  a  villain's  mind." 

And  the  three  bars  sinister  in  his 
stemma  show  whence  he  derived  these 
lovable  qualities.  They  were  in  his  blood  ; 
he  derived  them  from  his  mother;  he 
derived  them  from  his  ancestress  Telegone; 
he  derived  them  from  the  blood  yet  more 
remote  that  he  shared  with  Tyro. 


GENEALOGICAL  RESUM6 

Troy  taken ...         .  •  •         •  •  •         •■ 

yEolic  emigration  under  Pcnthilus 
Final  colonisation  of  Lesbos 
Ionic  Apoecia 

Foundation  of  Cyme         

Foundation  of  Smyrna      

Birth  of  Homer      

Archippus  succeeds  Acastus  as  Archon 


.   II83 

II23 

.  1053 

.  1044 

•  1033 

.  IOI5 

.  IOI5- 

14 

1014 

The  Co7nplete  Life  of  Homer, 

Expulsion  of  Amazons  from  Smyrna 
Homer  setat.  7.  His  first  Homou  ("And 
.me  too")  

His  mother  marries  Phemius        ...         ,\ 
The    Colophonian    War  against*  Smyrna* 

Homer  a  boy  of  12  or  13  ...  ' 

Call  of  Homer  (as  we  say  Call  of  Abraham', 

Call  of  Samuel) ;  Homer  first  conscious 

of    his   sacred   function.      His    second 

Homou  ("And  me  too") 
Homer  succeeds  Phemius  in  his  school  .*..* 
Capture  of  Smyrna  by  the  Amazono-Colo- 

phonians 

Death  of  Homer's  Mother  *         .., 
Exile  of  Homer      ...         ...         '^[ 

Re-colonisation    of   Smyrna    by   Athens* 

commonly    called     the    Ampliatio     in 

urbem     ... 

Smyrna  joins  the  Ionic  League     ... 
Homer  returns  to  Smyrna... 

Arrival  of  Homer  at  Chios 

Homer  marries      

Homer  dies  at  los 


211 


1008 
1004 

1003 


1003 
988 

986 
986 

985 


983 
983 
975 
965 
963 
944 


P  2 


CHAPTER  VI. 

HIS      BIRTH-PLACE. 

"  Seven  cities  claim'd  great  Homer  dead 
Through  which  ahve  he  begg'd  his  bread." 

The  cities  referred  to  in  the  above  well- 
known  lines  are  named  in  the  following 
even  yet  more  familiar  line — 

"  Smyrna,  Rhodus,  Colophon,  Salamis,  Chios,  Argos, 

Athense." 
Smyrna,  Rhodes,  Colophon,  Salamis,  Chios,  Argos, 

Athens. 

Of  this  line  there  were  three  other 
versions  : — 

(i)  Smyrna,  Rhodus,  Colophon,  Salamis,Ios,*  Argos, 
Athense. 

(2)  Cyme,  Smyrna,  Chios,  Colophon,  Pylos,  Argos, 

Athence. 

(3)  Smyrna,  Chios,  Colophon,  Ithace,  Pylos,  Argos, 

Athenae. 


*  Here  los  takes  the  place  of  Chios  as  the  place 
of  his  birth,  even  as  Chios  takes  the  place  elsewhere 


The  Complete  Life  of  Ho7ner,     213 

Raising  the  seven  to  eleven  in  all. 

But  why  was  he  claimed  by  these  eleven 
cities  ?  For  one  or  other  of  the  following 
reasons,  or  no  reasons  : — 

He  was  a  Smyrnaean,  because  born  on 
the  banks  of  the  Meles,  in  the  neighbour- 
hood of  that  city.  But  he  was  of  Athens 
because,  as  the  epigram  runs,  Smyrna  was 
a  colony  of  Ephesus,  which,  in  its  turn, 
was  colonised  by  Athens. 

"  He  was,  he  was  our  golden  citizen, 
Since  we  Athenians  Smyrna  colonised." 

Of  Cuma?,  because  that  was  the  cradle  of 
his  race ;  Ephorus  himself,  a  Cumaean, 
naturally  tries  to  make  him  out  something 
more — both  the  son  of  a  Cumeean  father 
and  a  Cumaean  mother.  Of  Colophon, 
because  his  father  was  a  Colophonian ; 
and,  also,  because  if  he  were  born  as  late 
as  the  school  of  Apollodorus  would  have 
him,  Smyrna  had  then  fallen  into  the 
hands  of  the  Colophonians.  And  a 
Lydian  for  just  the  contrary  reason,  be- 
cause, if  born  earlier,   Smyrna  was  then, 

of  los  as  the  place  of  his  death.  In  all  probability, 
as  I  have  said  already,  they  are  both  alike  a  mere 
copyist's  blunder — a  mere  lapsus  calami. 


214    '^f^^  Complete  Life  of  Homer, 

as  Aristotle  says,  in  the  power  of  the 
Lydians  ;  though  very  shortly  afterwards, 
when  he  was  still  a  mere  child,  the 
Lydians  had  to  give  way  before  the  rising 
power  of  the  /Eolians.  Of  Egypt,  by 
his  travels  there,  and  because  there  he 
found  the  materials  for  writing  his  '*  Iliad," 
or,  at  any  rate,  because  he  first  wrote  it 
there ;  there  he  first  saw  books ;  in  a 
literary  sense,  therefore,  hundred-gated 
Thebes  was,  indeed,  his  native  city,  and 
he  was  an  Egyptian  in  the  same  sense 
that  he  was  an  Orpheid.  He  made  him- 
self a  Chian  by  living  there,  and  an  Ian 
by  dying  there.  Argos  claimed  him  be- 
cause he  wrote  the  **  Iliad";  Ithaca  be- 
cause he  wrote  the  "Odyssey";  Pylos, 
because  of  Thamyris  and  Nestor  and 
Krethon.  Thessaly,  because  his  mother's 
family  came  from  Magnesia,  and  also  be- 
cause of  Achilles.  Cyprus,  because  he 
wrote  a,  if  not  the  **Cypria."  Cenchreee  in 
the  Troad,  because  it  was  inferred  from 
the  prophecy  of  Poseidon  (II.,  vi.  307,  30S) 
that  he  was  born  under  the  sway  of  the 
^neadae.  The  claims  of  Lucania,  of 
Italy,  and  of  Rome  are  absurd  shadows  of 
shadows,  based  as  they  are  upon  that  of 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer.    215 

Troy.  That  of  Grynium  is  merely  that 
of  Grynean  Apollo,  the  tutelary  deity, 
whose  poet  of  poets  he  was,  and  in  whose 
temple  he  was  finally  canonised.  Rhodes, 
raised  from  beneath  the  sea  by  Apollo, 
and  peopled  by  the  children  of  the  Sun, 
claimed  him  no  less  naturally  from  the 
mythological  standpoint.  The  claim  of 
Gnossus  or  Crete  is  obviously  identical 
with  that  of  los  ;  the  claim  of  Mycenae 
with  that  of  Argos.  Syria  claimed  him 
because  his  heroes  eat  no  fish,  and  in 
Syria  fish  are  sacred  animals.  So  at  least 
says  Athenceus,  quoting  from  Meleager 
of  Gadara.  But  1  do  not  quite  see  how 
this  is  reconcileable  with  Homers  own 
account  of  the  diet  of  the  Hellenic  Sindbad 
and  his  shipmates,  and  also  that  of  Mene- 
laus  and  his  crew  when  they  could  get 
nothing  better. 

Ulysses  says  of  his  crew  : — 

"  Now  fish  in  lake,  now  bird  in  air. 
Now  beast  on  plain  for  food  they  snare."  * 

And  Menelaus  of  his  : — 

"  Hunger  so  pinch't  their  bellies  they 
A  fishing  went  day  after  day."  \ 

*  Odyss.,  xii.  330,  331.         f  Odyss.,  iv.  368-9. 


2i6    The  Complete  Life  of  Home 7\ 

And,  again,  in  another  place  *'Odyss.," 
xix.  109-114),  we  find  these  words  : — 

"Like  to  a  blameless  king  who,  god-like  in  virtue 
and  wisdom, 

Justice  ever  maintains,  whose  rich  land  unfailingly 

yields  him 
Harvests  of  barley  and  wheat,  and  his  orchards  are 

heavily  fruited ; 
Strong  are  the  young  of  his  flock,  and  the   sea 

yields  him  fish  in  abundance." 

But  I  fancy  Syria  is  merely  a  mistake  for 
Syrie,  the  island  mentioned,  **  Odyssey," 
XV.  403-484,  from  whence  came  our  poet  s 
pseudo-mother,  told  of  in  the  Aristotelian 
myth.  And  in  exactly  the  same  way 
another  almost  equally  weak  claim,  that 
of  Rhodes,  may  be  eliminated,  if  we  sup- 
pose a  Rhodes  in  the  Thebaid,* — a  sort  of 
St.  John's  Wood,  in  the  suburbs  of  Thebes, 
where  Homer's  half-brother  was  born.  I 
admit  this  conjecture  is  wholly  baseless; 
but,  on  the  other  hand,  the  claim  of 
Rhodes  is  very  nearly  baseless  too,  and 
it  is  absolutely  unaccountable  that  it 
should  have  been  admitted  amongst  the 
Seven,   unless  we  can    either   make  it  a 

*  Just  as  there  was  an  Ithaca  in  Syria. 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer,    217 

suburb  of  Thebes  or  place  it  in  the  Troad. 
On  the  contrary,  the  claim  of  Argos 
is  strengthened  by  the  suspicion  that 
sly,  good  man  Kleanax  may  have  been 
Homer's  father. 

The   Babylonians  claimed  him,   saying 
that  he  got^  his  name  of  Homer  because 
he  was  their  bailsman,   i.e,,  went  on  an 
embassy  from  them  to  the  Athenians.    At 
least  so  says  Bachman.*     But  I  fancy  this 
must   have    been    a  joke  in  the   ''  Baby- 
lonians" of  Aristophanes,  to  which  Lucian 
pleasantly  alludes  when    he   says,   '*No; 
our  poet  was   not    a    Smyrniote,   nor  yet 
a   Colophonian,  nor  yet   a   Chian,   but   a 
Babylonian,"   jeering  at   the   ridiculously 
slender  grounds  on    which    many  of  the 
Hellenic  cities,  both  in  Asia  and  in  Europe, 
based  their  claims.     Cyprus  claimed  him 
because   of  his   vivid   description  of  the 
locust-plague,   so   com.mon  in  that  island 
even    to   this   day.     Lasdy,   the    Dorians 
claimed  him  (i)  "because  he  was  exposed 
on  the  banks  of  the  Meles,  Dorian  fashion;'* 
(2)  because  the  name  of  Ortis  Dorio,  that 
is,  Ortis  the  Dorian,  is  found  in  his  pseudo- 

*  "Anecdota,"  vol.  ii.  p.  328. 


2i8     The  Complete  Life  of  Ho7ncr, 

stemma.  Thus  the  arch-heretical  Chori- 
zontes  Hellanicus  and  Xenon  would  seem 
to  have  recognised  (i)  Homer's  birth  on 
the  Meles  ;  (2)  to  have  attributed  the 
stemma  of  the  younger  Homer  to  the  elder 
one  ;  (3)  to  have  denied  the  elder  Homer's 
claim  to  the  "  Odyssey,"  because  this  was 
certainly  a  product  of  the  Chian  school, 
and  Homer  was  no  less  certainly  not  a 
Chian. 

"  Oh,  happy  and  unhappy,  for  you  are  born  to  both  ; 
You  seek  your  fatherland,  but  you  have  only  a 

motherland  :  * 
Your  mother  city  is  an  isle  nor  near  nor  far  from 

Crete ; 
In  it  it  is  thy  doom  to  end  thy  days. 
The  island  of  los  is  the  fatherland  of  your  mother ; 
In  it  shall  you  be  buried,  but  beware  of  the  young 

men's  riddle." 

The  claim  of  los  is  an  instance  of  the 
principle  of  successive  evolutions.  Be- 
ginning with  Homer's  dying  there,  as  he 
doubtless  did,  they  concocted  an  oracle  to 
prove  that  his  mother  was  from  that  island, 
as  she  certainly  was  not,  but  most  pro- 
bably her  name  was  Clymene  ;  for,  after 

*  Being  of  unacknowledged  paternity. 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer,     219 

all,  Melanope  and  Kretheis  are  only  patro- 
nymics.    Then  they  made  up  a  tale  from 
that  told  in  Homer  (*'Odyss."  xv.  415-481), 
as  discussed  in  last  chapter,  pp.  196,  197,— 
a    tale   which    the    Philathenians   eagerly 
adopted,— that  she  had  a  lover  there,  and 
conceived   Homer  there,  and  that  at  the 
end^  of  a  year's  guilty  intimacy  with  the 
fascinating   but   profligate    stranger,    she 
tied   in    her  shame  to  a  spot  under  the 
special  protection  of  Jove's  Aigis  (Aigina), 
thus  making  out  Homer's  mother  an"^  Ian,' 
of  Cretan   origin  (hence  the  phrase  "  nor 
near  nor  far  from  Crete  "),  and  sacrificed  a 
goat  on  our  poet's  tomb  as  a  mark  that 
wherever  he  might  roam  he  was  an  Aigaian 
Greek— a  Greek  of  the  branch  that  had 
spread  all   over  the  Aigaian   Sea,  in  the 
time   of  Minos   H.,  from   the  isle  where 
Amalthea  the  goat  {aig),  now  a  constella- 
tion, had  suckled  the  king  of  heaven  in 
his  infancy.     Last  of  all  they  pitched  upon 
a   dim,    mildewed,    long-forgotten    grave, 
which  may  or  may  not  have  been  that  of 
the  unfortunate  daughter  of  Arybas,  sup- 
posing her  to  have  been  washed  ashore 
upon  los,  or  that  of  the  mother  of  Homer 
the  Younger,  supposing  him  to  have  been 


2  20    The  Co7nplctc  Life  of  Homer, 

born  at  los  ;  and  which,  again,  may  or 
may  not  have  had  on  it  the  sacred  name 
of  Clymene.  And  this  they  declared  to 
be  the  grave  of  the  mother  of  the  author 
of  the  "  IHad."  But  beyond  this  even 
they  durst  not  go,  even  they  durst  not 
contradict  the  notorious  fact  that  Homer 
was  born  on  the  banks  of  the  Meles, 
though  their  trumped-up  tombstone  im- 
plied as  much,  unless,  indeed,  it  was  only 
her  cenotaph. 

But  Colophon  states  its  case  thus  : — 

"  Oh,  Homer,  son  of  Meles." 

(Therefore  it  allows  Homer  to  have 
been  bo7m  at  Smyrna.) 

"  Oh,  glory  of  Greece, 
And  Colophon  thy  fatherhuid.'''' 

This  last  line  claims  Homer's  father, 
whether  Maeon  or  Dmasagoras,  or  who- 
ever he  was,  as  a  Colophonian. 

But  Kleanax  was  certainly  an  Argive, 
and  Dmasagoras  has  been  proved  up  to 
the  hilt  a  Salaminian,  therefore  Mceon 
must  have  been  a  Colophonian  in  the 
opinion  of  the  Epigrammatist,  as  it  is  clear 


T/ie  Complete  Life  of  Homer,     221 

from  "  The  Lives  "  he  w^as,  for  we  read  in 
"  The  Lives "  that  he  came  with  the 
Amazons,  and  Strabo  tells  us  that  the 
Amazons  returned  to  Colophon.  And 
naturally  so,  that  being  the  native  city  of 
their  leader.  And  Homer  no  less  natu- 
rally said,  '*  And  me  too,''  as  wanting  to 
go  with  his  adopted  father. 

Such  are  the  earliest  memorials  on 
record  concerning  our  poet  being  an  oracle 
of  extreme  antiquity  but  deplorable  in- 
veracity, and  an  inscription  on  his  statue 
about  the  middle  of  the  sixth  century  B.C. 
in  the  temple  of  Delphi.  The  legend  in 
connection  with  the  former  is  adopted  by 
Aristotle.  His  motive  for  pre-dating  the 
poet's  birth  has  already  been  pointed  out. 

The  claim  of  Dmasagoras  is  also  vehe- 
mently contradicted  by  another  epigram 
on  another  statue  of  Homer — 

*'  I  am  not,  and  I  will  not  be  a  Salaminian, 
Or  a  son  of  Meles-Demagoras ;" 

meaning,  *' I  am  not  of  Salamis  or  Colo- 
phon, but  a  true  Smyrniote.  My  father 
was  Mceon,  not  Demagoras  ;  my  mother 
Cretheis,  not  Themisto." 

But  the  people  of  Cyprus  said  that  The- 


222    The   Covtplete  Life  of  Homer, 

misto,  one  of  the  maidens  of  their  land, 
was  his  mother,  and  that  the  birth  of 
Homer  was  predicted  in  the  followinij 
lines  : — 

"  And  then  in  sea-girt  Cyprus  a  mighty  bard  shall  be, 
A\hom  Themisto  shall  bring  forth  in  the  country 

queen  of  women  ; 
A  far-famed  bard  secluded  from  wealthy  Salamis, 
Alone  the  woes  of  merry  Greece  he  shall  be  the  first 

to  sing. 

And  ageless   and   immortal  be   for  ever   and  for 
ever."* 

This,  however,  is  written  on  behalf  of 
Stasinus,  who  shares  with  Hegesinus  the 
honour^^  of  being  the  writer  of  *'  The 
Cypria,"  t  and  who  was  born  in  the  coun- 
try,}: while  his  rival  was  a  citizen  of  Sala- 
mis. It  has  nothing  to  do  with  Homer, 
and  the  claim  of  Cyprus  is  solely  based  on 
a  false  interpretation  of  a  sham  prophecy. 
Most  certainly,  had  Homer  been  a  Cypriote, 
he  would  have  had  more  to  say  about 
Teucer  in  the  ''  Iliad,"  and  would  not  have 

*  Pausanias,  x.  24. 

t  Athenaeus,  xv.  p.  682  ;  Epic.  Gr.  Fr.,  p.  2. 
i   K''}^  !^^  immediate  neighbourhood  of  Salamis, 
^  a  babbath-day  s  journey  therefrom'"  (Epiphanius). 

m  the  fields  as  you  go  from  Salamis  "  (Pausanias) 


The  Complete  Life  oj  Lfomer.    22 


*> 
J 


ignored  him  in  the  ''Odyssey."  Nor 
would  he  have  scorned  the  patron  goddess 
of  his  native  isle  so  openly ;  nor  would  he 
have  given  only  one  line  to  Salamis  in  his 
''Catalogue." 

So,  had  he  been  born  at  Rhodes,  Apollo's 
own  special  bard  could  never  have  kept 
silence  about  the  supernatural  origin  of  his 
native  isle.  The  claim  of  Rhodes  is  indeed 
based  on  a  confusion  between  Helios,  the 
Sun-god,  and  Apollo,  universal  in  Ovid  s 
time,  but  absolutely  unknown  to  our  poet. 

But  be  this  as  it  may,  all,  as  far  as  I 
can  see,  admit  that  Homer  was  do7^n  at 
Smyrna.  He  was,  undoubtedly,  a  citizen 
of  Chios,  and  as  such,  Pindar,  Simonides,* 
and  Theocritus  t  hail  him  as  the  Man  of 
Chios  ;  but  I  have  nowhere  seen  it  even 
hinted  that  he  was  born  there.  Indeed, 
Pindar  himself  recognises  Smyrna  as  his 
native  place.  J  ^  He  says  he  was  a  Smyr- 
niote  a7id  ^.  Chian,  exactly  as  we  say.§ 

I  will  not  weary  the  reader  with  the  in- 
numerable proofs  offered  by  a  multitude 

*  Bergk.,  "  Poet.  Lyr.  Gr."  p.  289. 

t  Idyll,  vii.  47. 

X  "Lives,"  p.  28;  Find.  Fr.,  189. 

§  Plut.  "Life"(Works,  vol.  vi.). 


i* 


5 


2  24    The  Complete  Life  of  Homer. 

of  writers,  from  the  pseudo- Herodotus 
downwards,  that  Homer  was  an  ^Eolic, 
not  an  Ionic,  Greek.  Look  at  the  nume- 
rous episodes  devoted  to  Nestor,  Bellero- 
phon,  Krethon,  and  other  i^oHds,  and  to 
none  else,  save  Typhon  and  Niobe  of 
Smyrniotis  —  certainly  to  no  Dorian  or 
Amphictyonid  ;  and  can  you  doubt  it  ? 
And  if  an  ^olid,  of  necessity  a  Smyrniote. 
That  Homer  was  a  native  of  Smyrna, 
appears  also  most  plainly  from  his  works, 
(i.)  Sipylus  was  the  native  mountain  of 
his  race.  Thither,  when  the  people  were 
turned  to  stone  ("  II.,"  xxiv.  671),  that  is, 
buried  in  an  earthquake,  came  a  colony 
from  Athens,  but  not  sent  by  Theseus, 
whom  Homer  mentions  but  once,  and  with- 
out applauding  epithet.  "  II.,"  i.  265,  and 
*'Odyss.,"^i.  63,  are  interpolated  by  Pei- 
sistratus  (just  as  he  expolated  Hesiod)  in 
honour  of  the  great  national  hero.  And 
Aristeides  confounds  two  quite  distinct 
Theseuses — Theseus,  the  putative  son  of 
^geus,  and  a  Theseus,  one  of  the  founders 
of  Cyme,  an  Admetid  who  flourished  two 
centuries  later.  It  probably  came  on  the 
occasion  of  the  usurpation  of  the  supposi- 
titious  Erechtheid-^oreus.      And  thence 


I 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer,    225 

came  the  Pelopida^.  Hence  Homer's  one 
object  of  reverence  at  Athens  : — 

"The  people  of  high-souled   Erechtheus, 
Whom  whilom  Athene  the  fair.'* 

Hence  Athene  was  his  tutelary  deity. 
Hence  the  story  of  Athene  and  Hephaes- 
tus mysteriously  introduces,  t  and  the 
house  of  Pelops  is,  the  one  great  theme  of 
the  Cycle,  &c.,  &c.  And  can  we  doubt 
what  he  means  by  the  **  beds  of  the 
nymphs  "  in  a  passage  so  strangely  inter- 
polated ? — the  cave  where  he  sang  in  his 
boyhood.  (2.)  The  abominably  insulting 
usage  of  Artemis,  the  tutelary  deity  of  the 
Amazons,  at  the  hands  of  Juno,  the  tute- 
lary deity  of  the  Argives,J  points  clearly 
to  the  final  disappearance  of  the  Lydo- 
Amazons  before  the  Argive-^olians  in 
Homer's  childhood.^  (3.)  The  introduc- 
tion of  Tyche  in  the  hymn  to  Ceres  (line 
420)  connects  the  Tyche  whose  temple 
was  at  Smyrna  with  the  Tyche  of  Homer  s 
maternal    ancestors.       And     hence    Phe- 

*  I1-,  ii.  547- 

t  *'  Epic,  Gr.  Fragm.,"  p.  4. 

j  II.,  xxi.  480-493. 

§  Westermann's  "  Lives,"  p.  22. 


2  26     The  Complete  Life  of  Homer, 

reptolis,*  as  being  the  tutelary  deity  of 
Pherae.t  (4.)  In  the  hymn  to  Artemis  we 
read  : — 

''Sing,  Artemis,  O  Muse,  the  sister  of  Apollo, 
Who  having  yoked  the  horses  of  Meles  deep-grown 

with  rushes, 
Drives  her  all-golden  chariot  swiftly  thro'  Smyrna 
To    vine-abounding     Claros,    where     silver-bow'd 

Apollo  sits  waiting  for  her." 

Cf  Pindar,  '*  01.,"  vi.  40,  vii.  54;  andean 
there  be  a  doubt  that  reference  is  made 
to  the  birth  of  the  poet  amidst  the  rushes 
of  the  Meles  with  her  as  unseen  midwife 
to  the  poet  that  ages  ago  was  five  minutes 
old  midwife  to  the  poet's  patron  God  ? 
And  she  flies  to  Claros  to  bear  to  her 
brother  the  glad  intelligence.  (5.)  Com- 
pare, too, — 

**  'Neath  snowy  Tmolus  in  the  wealthy  deme 
Of  Hyle  "  ("  II.,"  XX.  385), 


and 


"  The  seven-hide  shield  which  Tychius  wrought, 
The  best  of  leather-cutters  who  at  Hyle  dwelt  " 
("  II.,"  vii.  220,  221), 


*  Paus.,  iv.  30-36, 
t  Il-»  V.  543- 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer,     227 

with  Westermann's  ''  Lives,"  pp.  4  and  14, 
and  we  cannot  fail  to  see  their  exact  iden- 
tity ;  we  cannot  fail  to  see  that  the  *'  Lives  " 
are  here  drawn  bodily  from  Homer,  that 
Homer  here  glorifies  his  benefactor,  Ty- 
chius, oriundus  Tyche  Smyrnaeensi,  who 
dwelt  hard  by  Homer's  native  place  : — 

"  In  Hyle's  wealthy  deme  the  oak-grown  spot, 
Where  Typhon  lies  at  Arima"  ("II.,"  ii.  783). 

There  is  more  in  this  last  point  than  meets 
the  eye.  Typhon's  place  of  penal  durance 
was  unknown.  Every  one  placed  it  in  the 
nearest  earthquake  or  volcanic  centre.  An 
Icelander  would  have  put  it  under  Mount 
Hecla  ;  a  South  American,  under  Chimbo- 
razo  or  Cotopaxi ;  an  Italian  placed  it 
under  Mount  Etna  or  in  the  island  of 
Pithecusa  ;  a  Syrian  or  Egyptian,  in  the 
middle  of  the  Serbonian  bog  which  ex- 
tended from  Syria  to  Pelusium  in  Egypt : 
Herodorus,  indeed,  does  so.  Homer,  there- 
fore, in  placing  it  at  Arima,  proves  himself 
a  Smyrniote. 

(6.)  Note  also  Ulysses,  in  one  of  his 
lying  tales,  calls  himself  the  illegitimate  son 
of  Castor,  the  son  of  //Jy/ax,  and  further 
that  Hyl^  was  a  suburb  of  Smyrna. 

Q2 


2  28     The  Complete  Life  of  Horner, 


(7.)  Lastly,  in  the  ''  Lives/'  we  have 
him  saying  : — 

*'  iEolid  Smyrna  on  my  mother's  knee, 
A  babe  I  watcht  thy  shore  lasht  by  the  sea.'* 

(8.)  Aristeides,  the  rhetorician  priest  of 
Hephaestus  at  Smyrna,  178  to  180  a.d., 
had  the  honour  of  at  last  decisively  settling 
the  dispute,  even  as  the  epigram  has  it : — 

"Aristeides  put  an  end  to  the  dispute  amongst 
the  cities  of  Ionia  which  they  had  before  concerning 
the  birthplace  of  Homer.  They  now  all  say  with 
one  mouth,  '  Smyrna  bore  divine  Homer,' — Smyrna, 
which  brought  forth  the  rhetorician  Aristeides."* 

But  Smyrna  only  brought  forth 
Aristeides  as  Chios  brought  forth  Homer. 
Aristeides  was  born  at  Adriani,  just  as 
Homer  was  born  at  Smyrna.  It  is,  in  fact, 
only  this  equivocal  use  of  such  words  as 
egeiieto  and  ekmake  that  leaves  the 
smallest  shade  of  doubt  upon  a  question 
otherwise  as  clear  as  crystal.  But,  un- 
fortunately, people  born  at  one  place  and 
living  and  dying  at  another  were  apt  to  be 
thus  reckoned  two-citied.  And  so  they 
were  if  they  were  born  in  one  place  and 
their  parents  in  another.     Thus,  Archilo- 

*  Anthol.  Planud.,  320. 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer,    229 

chus  was  both  a  Parian  and  a  Thasian, 
Protagenes  a  Teian  and  an  Abderite,  Ter- 
pander  both  of  Arne  and  of  Antissa,  &c. 
Just  so,  though  Hercules  was  born  at 
Tiryns,  Plutarch  calls  him  ''  our  Boeotian 
and  Argive  Hercules."  And  just  so 
Mimnermus  was  called  a  Colophonian, 
even  as  Homer  was,  though  really  a 
Smyrniote  like  Homer,  but  descended 
from  the  Colophonians  that  re-conquered 
Smyrna  from  the  yEolians.  Yet,  he  plainly 
calls  himself  a  Colophonian  : — 

"  By  the  will  of  the  gods  7i'e  took  ^olid  Smyrna.'* 

But  he  does  not  claim  Homer  as  a  fellow- 
citizen,  whilst  Homer  himself  tells  us  that 
he  is  heart  and  soul  an  yEolid. 

The  case  of  Pindar  is  also  most  illustra- 
tive of  that  of  Homer.  Like  Homer,  he 
is  claimed  by  two  birthplaces,  Thebes^ 
where  he  was  actually  born,  and  Cynos- 
cephalae,  a  village  in  the  territory  of 
Thebes,  from  whence  his  parents  came. 
Yet  so  inveterate  was  the  tendency  to 
confound  birthplace  and  mother-city, 
that,  whilst  Aristotle  distinctly  states  that 
Homer  was  born  on  the  banks  of  the 
Meles,  two  of  the  ''Lives"  declare   that 


230     The  Complete  Life  of  Hojuer. 


Aristotle  proves  that  he  was  from  the  Isle 
of  los,  where  he  really  never  set  foot  till  a 
few  weeks  before  his  death.  Like  Homer, 
too,  three  fathers  claim  Pindar, — Pagondas, 
Daiphontus,  and  Scopelinus,  the  flute- 
player.  He  was  the  son  of  Scopelinus,  in 
the  sense  that  Homer  was  the  son  of 
Thamyris  ;  Scopelinus  taught  the  one  to 
play  the  flute,  and  Thamyris  the  other. 
And  he  was  the  son  of  Daiphontus,  in 
the  sense  that  Homer  was  the  son  of 
Demagoras,  that  is,  according  to  the  flesh. 
And  he  was  the  son  of  Pagondas,  in  the 
sense  that  Homer  was  the  son  of  Mseon, 
for  Maeon  adopted  Homer,  and  Pagondas 
Pindar.  Lastly,  like  Homer,  he  is  claimed 
by  two  mothers,  Myrto  and  Cleidike.  He 
was  the  son  of  Cleidike,  as  Homer  was 
the  son  of  Cretheis  and  the  son  of  Myrto 
both  as  Homer  was  the  son  of  Hyrnetho, 
that  is,  by  adoption,  and  as  Homer  was  the 
son  of  Calliope.  For  he  was  the  disciple 
of  Myrto,  the  first,  and,  next  to  Corinna, 
the  greatest,  of  Theban  poetesses. 

Nor  do  Homer  and  Pindar  stand  alone 
in  their  multi-paternity.  Five  fathers  claim 
Stesichorus,*  seven  Sappho,t  and  four  the 


*  The  "Lives,"  p.  113. 


t  Ibid.,  p.  III. 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer,      231 

Sibyl  of  Erythrae.*  Stesichorus  is  like 
Homer,  too,  in  his  polypolitism.  "  He  is 
called,  it  is  true,  Stesichorus,  of  Himera, 
but  some  say  that  he  was  from  Matauria, 
in  Italy  ;  some,  that  he  was  banished  from 
Pallantium,  in  Arcadia,  and  came  to 
Catane,  and  there  he  died  and  was  buried."t 
Thus,  four  birthplaces  claim  Stesichorus. 
three  Mimnermus,  six  Aristophanes,  and 
eight  or  nine  the  Sibyl.  J 

So  Homer's  son-in-law,  Creophylus  I., 
was  at  once  a  Samian,  a  Chian,  and  an 
Ian.  That  is  to  say,  he  was  born  at 
Samos,  and  died  at  los,  but  resident  for  a 
time  at  Chios,  when  Homer  made  it  for 
many  ages  the  literary  centre  of  Western 
Asia.  On  reconsideration  I  doubt  this. 
His  family  was  of  Samos,  and  he  lived  at 
Chios,  in  the  time  of  Homer  the  elder. 
But  to  say  he  was  an  Ian  is  to  confound 
the  two  Homers.  See  for  this  chapter  ix. 
on  the  pseudo- Homer. 

(9.)  The  claim  of  Athens,  based  as  it  is, 
whether  on  the  original  colonisation  of 
Smyrna,  in  the  reign  of  /Egeus,  or  on  the 
subsequent   Ionic  Apoccia  1044-3  ^-C-'  ^^ 


*  The  "  Lives,"  p.  83.    f  Ibid.,  p.  84.    %  Ibid.,  p.  113. 


232      The  Complete  Life  of  Homer, 

of  course,  all  so  much  more  evidence  in 
favour  of  that  of  Smyrna.  Homer  had, 
doubtless,  Erechtheid  blood  in  him,  but 
no  poet,  no  rhetorician,  no  orator  from 
iEschylus  to  Baletta,  neither  Isocrates, 
nor  Aristeides,  nor  Photius,  ever,  in  his 
most  high-flown  panegyric,  claimed  this 
height  of  honours  for  his  dear  native  city.* 
(10.)  The  variations  in  Homer's  name, 
Melesigenes  and  Melissigenes,  Melesa- 
goras  and  Melissagoras,  are  significant. 
They  show  that  the  Cecropian  bees,  that 
were,  we  read,  the  device  of  the  Neleid 
Apcecists,  gave  a  new  and  most  appropriate 
name  to  the  honey-sweet  waters  of  the  rush- 
fringed  stream  that  before  was  called  Ache- 
lous.  They  show,  as  so  many  other  things 
show,  the  poet's  intimate  familiarity  with 
Smyrniotic  topography. t  They  show  that 
he  was  born  after,  but  not  very  long  after, 
the  Neleid  Apoecia.  They  show  (like  that 
other  variation,  Kretheis  or  Kritheis)  the 
exceeding  antiquity  of  the  Pseudo-Hero- 
dotean  legends,   and  the  marvellous  veri- 


*  Philostratus,  *'  Imagines,"  bk.  ii.  c.  viii.  p.  22. 

t  Aristeides,  vol.  i.  425  ;  "  Monodia  epi  Smyrna, 
Isidorus,  lib.  xiv.  cap.  i. ;  Antholog.,  lib.  iv 
**  Epigr.  in  Peisistr." 


»» 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer,     233 

similitude  far  exceeding  mere  ordinary 
probability  thereof. 

(11.)  We  know  from  the  Smyrnean  in- 
scriptions that  Tyche  was  a  quarter  of 
Smyrna, — the  Kretheid  quarter.*  Tychius 
(who  afterwards  moved  to  Neonteichos, 
anciently  called  Hyle)  was  consequently 
Homer's  near  neighbour.  How  natural,, 
then,  his  Kindness  when  *'  the  wondrous 
boy"  of  twenty  years  ago  returned  home 
at  last  a  poor,  blind,  heart-broken  beggar ! 
Combine  this  with  what  I  have  noticed 
elsewhere  about  Hyle,  and  Arlma,  and 
Sipylus,  and  the  Achelous  and  the  Meles, 
and  Smyrna  itself,  and  surely  the  proof 
almost  attains  to  certainty. 

(12.)  Alexander  believed  in  Smyrna,  and 
therefore  rebuilt  it,t  or  at  least  left  word 
on  his  deathbed  that  it  should  be  rebuilt. 
Virgil  believed  Homer  a  Smyrniote  and 
a  Kretheid,  hence  his  poet  Kretheus. 
Theopompus,  in  assigning  to  Homer  a 
date  of  500  years  after  the  epoch,  evidently 


*  Aristeides,  vol.  i.  pp.  32-72;  "  Smyrniotikos 
Politikos,"  Aristot.  **  Poet."  Euseb.  "Chron.'* 
(*  Smyrna  in  urbis  modum  ampliata '). 

t  Aristeides,  vol.  i.  pp.  434-436  ;  "  Palinodia,'* 
Paus.  *•  Achaica." 


234     ^^^^  Complete  Life  of  Ho7ner. 

confounded  the  great  poet  with  some  local 
Homer  (No.  6  in  Archilochus's  list  of  the 
tiicrht  Homers,  of  whom  Xenophon  says 
**The  last  and  greatest  of  the  Homers 
lived  after  Thales"),  as  was  natural 
enough  in  a  Chian,  pleading  the  cause  of 
his  native  town  before  the  mighty  con- 
queror of  Asia,  but,  as  we  have  just  seen, 
Ephorus  having  just  brought  out  his 
great  work,  Alexander  knew  better, 
despite  even  the  potent  authority  of 
Anaximenes. 

And  now  to  conclude.  All  ancient 
Greece  from  Lesches  to  Christodorus, — 
Asius,  Scylax,  Hellanicus,  Xenon,  Pigres, 
Eugeon  or  Eumeon,  Ephorus,  Moschus, 
Crates,  Stesimbrotus,  Archilochus,  the 
Pseudo  -  Herodotus,  Pindar,  Aristotle, 
Philostratus,  Himerius,  Lucian,  Conon, 
Ptolemy,  Aristeides,  the  true  Plutarch 
and  the  false  Plutarch,  Nonnus,  Tzetzes. 
and,  above  all,  Quintus  Smyrnojus,  by  his 
very  name,  the  fifth  Smyrna^an  (Homer, 
Bion,  Theo,  and  Hermippus  being  the  other 
four),  although,  indeed,  there  were  others, 
viz.,  Scopelianus,  Polemo,  the  tutor  of  Aris- 
teides, Nicolaus,  and  Hermogenes,  the 
editor  of  the  "Life,"  in  the  reign  of  Adrian. 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer.     235 

All  the  Latin  writers,  —  Cicero,  Ovid, 
Martial,  Tibullus,  Silius,  Ausonius,  and 
Solinus  declare  positively,  and  in  every 
imaginable  way  (not  to  speak  of  all  our 
great  modern  names,  Politian,  Milton,  Eras- 
mus, Bentley,  and  Casaubon,  with  but  one 
solitary  exception,  that  of  Allatius),  that 
Homer  was  born  on  the  banks  of  the 
Meles,  near  Smyrna.  No  author,  I  believe, 
has  ever  categorically  denied  this  fact. 
Excluding  Theopompus  (whose  false  date 
sufficiently  condemns  him,  identifying  our 
poet,  as  he  does,  with  a  Chian  Homerid 
who  lived  500  years  after  the  Trojan 
War),  no  writer,  Greek  or  Latin,  states 
that  he  was  born  at  Chios.  They  only 
call  him  **  a  Chian"  and  '*  of  Chios"  (just 
as  Christ  was  called  "  a  Nazarene."  and 
*'  of  Nazareth  "),  and  "  the  man  of  Chios," 
(just  as  Pope  speaks  of  the  '*  Man  of  Ross"), 
"■  the  Chian  bard,"  and  the  like,  having 
regard  only  to  the  place  where  he  lived 
and  died,  and  from  whence  he  poured 
forth  his  melodies,  and  not  to  the  place 
where  he  first  breathed  the  breath  of  life 
at  all.  Thus  Themistius  does  not  doubt 
whether  he  was  born  at  Smyrna  or  at 
Chios,  but  only  at  which  of  the  two  places 


236     The  Complete  Life  of  Ho7ner. 

he  wrote  his  poems.  So  Alca^us  Mity- 
lenaeus,  represents  him  as  saying  : — 

"  Sing,  O  Muses  of  Chios,  my  verses  to  the  sons  of 
Greece." 

So  Theocritus  speaks  of  him  as  a  Chian 
warbler.  And  that  he,  Simonides,  Pindar, 
and  the  rest  mean  no  more,  I  prove  thus  : 
though  Pindar  calls  him  a  Chian,*  he 
states  in  a  passage  now  lost  that  he  was 
born  at  Smyrna. f  The  pseudo-Plutarchus, 
whilst  distinctly  stating  in  one  place  that  he 
was  born  on  the  Meles,J  nevertheless,  in 
another  place  calls  him  a  Chian  and 
Smyrniote.§  Bacchylides,  who,  as  country- 
man and  kinsman  of  Simonides,  must  be 
presumed  to  hold  his  view,  agrees  with 
Aristotle  ;  therefore  it  may  be  presumed 
that  Simonides  does  so  too.  And 
Themistius  with  the  mighty  Master,  whose 
works  he  paraphrased  ;  and  Theocritus 
(though  of  Chian  origin)  with  his  fellow 
Dorian.  The  Argive  quinquennia  at 
Chios  and  the  Homeridae  there  lasting  till 


*  Lives,  p.  30. 

X  Ibid.,  pp.  21,  22. 

§  MoraUa.,  vol.  vi.  (Tauchnitz). 


t  Ibid.,  p.  28. 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer,      237 

after  Pindar's  time,  all  come  to  the  same 
thing.  Aristotle,  ''  Rhetoric,"  ii.  23,  dis- 
tinctly denies  the  claim  of  Chios,  saying, 
"  The  Chians  honoured  Homer,  though  not 
a  citizen."  Hermesianax  also  denies  it, 
saying  : — 

"  To  narrow  Ithaca  sweet  Homer  soar'd, 
In  song  divine  for  wise  Penelope, 

(The  nom  de  gnerre  of  a  patriotess  of 
Smyrna,  of  whom  Homer  was  absurdly 
supposed  to  be  ipris.  The  real  truth  being 
that  the  poet's  love  for  Penelope  is  a  mere 
allegorical  interpretation  of  the  "  Odyssey," 
Penelope,  like  Spenser's  Gloriana,  being 
the  Chian  laureateship.) 

"  For  whose  sake,  after  many  toils,  he  dwelt 
In  a  small  isle  *  far  from  broad  fatherland  ;  f 
And  Menelaus  and  Ulysses  mourn'd 
In  their  long  wanderings  shadowing  forth  his  own."  J 

And  to  the  self-same  purport,  Homer 
himself  sings  thus  : — 

**  And  with  her  was,  I  read,  a  minstrel  swain ; 
But  when  the  fates  decreed  his  prince  should  fall, 
Then  did  the  traitor  take  the  faithful  bard, 
And  leave  him  on  a  desert  isle  to  die."  § 

*  Chios.  t  ^olis. 

X  Baletta,  ''  Life  of  Homer,"  p.  30. 
§  Odyss.,  iii.  267-271. 


238     The  Complete  Life  of  Homer. 

Referring  to  the  circumstances  now  all  but 
lost  in  oblivion  of  the  poet's  exile  from  his 
native  place.  And  in  the  well-known 
hymn  : — 

"  Who  is  the  sweetest  bard  performing  here? 
A  blind  man,  and  he  dwells  in  '  craggy  Chios.' " 

The  singular  way  in  which  the  place  of 
one's  exile  takes  the  place  of  one's  actual 
birthplace  in  the  Greek  mind  is  admirably 
illustrated  in  the  case  of  one  whose  fate 
was  singularly  similar  in  this  respect  to 
that  of  our  poet,   Herodotus  : — 

"  This  dust  conceals  Herodotus  when  dead  : 
Sprung  from  a  Dorian  fatherland,  he  shunn'd 
The  terrible  reproach  of  hostile  faction, 
And  made  proud  Thurium  his  fatherland."  * 

Lesches  too,  the  author  of  an  '*  I  Has 
Parva,"  flourished  700  B.C., — that  is,  long 
before  Pigres.  He  was,  as  we  learn  from 
Plutarch  ('' Conviv.  Sept.  Sap."),  the 
author  of  the  ''Contest  between  Homer  and 
Hesiod."  In  it  he  tells  us  that  Homer 
wrote  his  (not  Pigres's  Boccaccioesque) 
"Margites"  at  Colophonf.     Now,  in  the 

*  Anth.  Gr.  (Tauchnitz),  vol.  iii.  p.  378. 
t  Lives,  p.  3i. 


The  Complete  Life  of  Home7\      239 

six  admirable  lines  we  have  still  left  of  it, 
we  read : — 

*'  An  old  man  came  to  Colophon  :  a  holy  bard  was  he, 
And  in  his  hand  a  sweet-voiced  lyre  this  child  of 
Phoibus  bore." 

Compare  this  with  the  Pseudo-Hero- 
dotus.* ''  From  thence  he  went  to  Colo- 
phon, and  there  (the  Colophonians  agree 
with  me  in  saying,  contrary  to  the  account 
of  the  Ithacans),  he  was  once  more  attacked 
with  eye-disease,  and  became  blind."  And 
can  we  doubt  that  Colophon  was  not  his 
birthplace, — that  he  was  only  a  visitor 
there,  but  unhappily  detained  by  a  sad 
fatality  ? 

In  spite,  then,  of  the  well-known  line 
in  the  **Ciris"  :— 

"  Quae  Colophoniaco  Scyllae  dicantur  Homero;" 

In  spite  of  the  epigram  on  Nicander  : — 
"  Having  nourish'd  the  twain,"  &c., 

Colophon  does  not  really  claim  him.     It 
is  true  Antimachus  and  Nicander  call  him 


Lives,  p.  4. 


240     The  Complete  Life  of  Homer. 

a  Colophonian,  but  so  they  call  themselves 
Colophonians ;  yet  Nicander  flatly  con- 
tradicts the  above  lying  epigram  upon 
him,  saying  of  himself  : — 

"  Him  Claros  nurtured." 

The  exquisite  melody  of  the  line  thus 
obtained  may,  probably,  have  seduced  the 
learned  author  of  "  Ciris  "  in  his  unfledged 
youth,  and  other  warblers  after  him,  to 
apply  the  epithet  Colophoniac  to  Homer, 
but  it  is  true  in  a  sense  besides  :  true 
enough  for  poetry  anyhow. 

Homer  was  a  Colophonian  though  not  a 
native  of  Colophon,  exactly  as  one  may  be 
a  Staffordshire  man  without  being  a  native 
of  Stafford. 

Thus,  as  all  roads  lead  to  Rome,  so 
all  rival  claims  meet  at  the  river  Meles. 
Whether  you  call  him  an  Ian  or  a  Colo- 
phonian, you  alike  make  him  born  on  its 
banks.  And  whether  you  call  him  Lydus, 
or  Auletes,  or  Meeonius,  or  M^eonides,  it 
comes  to  the  same  thing.  For  Lydia  (as 
Herodotus  tells  us),  was  anciently  called 
Maeonia,  and  Smyrna,  during  the  two 
centuries  when  Lydia  ruled  the  sea,  w^as 
the  capital  of  both.     Hence  it  was  called 


The  Complete  Life  of  Horner.    241 

Lydian  Smyrna,  even  as  the  learned  Scy- 
lax  says, — **  Lydia  Smyrna  ubi  Homerus 
erat."*  As,  then,  neither  Colophon  nor  los, 
nor  Cumae  nor  Athens,  really  disputes  the 
claim  of  the  Meles,  so  neither  does  Chios. 
Whether  we  take  the  account  of  Aris- 
totle or  that  of  Ephorus,  they  distinctly 
state  that  he  was  born  there.  Chios  is,  at 
the  worst,  but  silent.  Even  Chios,  as  we 
learn  from  the  "  Lives "  (p.  24),  only 
claimed  him  after  all,  not  as  being  born 
there,  but  as  being  (i)  a  citizen  ;  (2)  the 
father  of  the  Homeridae. 

In  a  word,  no  city  but  Smyrna  seriously 
claimed  to  be  his  birthplace,  but  only  his 
father's  or  mother's,  till  very  late  times 
indeed.  At  last,  when  the  two  Homers 
were  utterly  amalgamated,  and  heretical 
views  the  most  absurd  propounded,  the 
Pseudo-Herodotus  was  either  merely 
re-published  (if  we  may  rely  on  the 
authority  of  Stephanus  Byzantius,  Suidas, 
Tzetzes,  and  Eustathius),  or  translated 
from  the  original  Carian  (of  ^,  if  not  the 
Herodotus),  or  most  lyingly  concocted 
by    Hermogenes,    of  Smyrna,   author   of 

*  Scylax,  cap.  89. 


242       The  Complete  Life  of  Ho7ner. 

"  Smyrna"  and  *'  The  Wisdom  of  Homer," 
and  Aristeides  wrote  his  "  Monody,"  his 
"  Palinode,"  &c.,  and  the  question  was  be- 
lieved to  be  finally  and  for  ever  settled  in 
favour  of  Smyrna  and  the  Meles,  as 
indeed  it  should  have  been,  for  the  other 
cities  have  no  case  whatever,  as  has,  I 
trust,  been  satisfactorily  demonstrated. 
And  from  this  time  the  Smyrnaean  legend 
bore  full  and  undivided  sway,  and  ex- 
panded, by  degrees,  to  its  full  dimensions. 
Homer's  mother  was  no  longer  Kretheis, 
but  Kritheis,  a  mimphe  agronomos,  and 
worshipped  at  Smyrna  as  such,  and  as 
such  she  no  longer  merely  bore  Homer  on 
the  banks  of  the  Meles,  but  was  beloved 
by  the  god  of  that  river.  And  Homer 
himself  encourages  this  legend  in  his  story 
of  Tyro  ('^Odyss.,"  xi.  278)  :— 

**  Who  loved  the  divine  river  Enipeus, 
The  most  beautiful  on  the  face  of  the  earth, 
And  oft  she  went  to  the  lovely  streams  of  Enipeus." 

Kretheis,  like  Tyro,  was  the  orphan 
daughter  of  an  ^olid,  to  whom  Homer, 
out  of  filial  pity,  sorely  misapplies  the 
epithet  ''  blameless."    Kretheis,  like  Tyro, 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer.     243 

was  beloved  by  a  river  god,  and  after  him 
was  wedded  to  an  ordinary  mortal.  Thus 
thrice  Homer  refers  emphatically,  and  at 
length,  to  his  birth  on  the  banks  of  the 
Meles,  but  only  once  to  the  native  city 
that  had  spurned  him,  and  that  with  thinly 
veiled  contempt.  Diana  passed  through 
Smyrna  on  her  way  from  the  Meles  to 
Claros.  That  is  all,  and  that  is  all  that 
Homer  did  on  his  way  from  his  mother  s 
womb  to  his  final  canonisation.  But  to  re- 
turn.^  There  were  pictures  of  the  loves  of 
the  river  Meles  and  the  wheat-nymph,  and 
one  of  these  Philostratus  describes  most 
charmingly  ('*  Imagines,"  book  ii.  c.  8). 
Athenaeus,  too,  tells  us  of  the  nuptial  supper 
of  the  Meles.  No  doubt,  a  sort  of  harvest- 
home  in  honour  of  him  and  his  wheat- 
nymph  bride,  where  bards  most  appro- 
priately congregated,  and  sang,  and  were 
regaled  with  barley-bread  (krithe)  in 
honour  of  Kritlieis,  and  cheese  {turos) 
in  honour  of  Tu7'o,  Then  Conon  tells  us 
how  Orpheus's  head  was  found  at  the 
rnouth  of  the  Meles  still  all  alive  and 
singing,* — a    legend    reminding  us   very 


♦  << 


Muthographoi  "  (VVestermann),  p.  147. 

R   2 


244     ^^^^  Complete  Life  of  Horner. 

strongly  of  that   of  St.  Gengulphus,  but 
the  significance  of  it  most  obvious. 

Lastly,  a  hurried  glance  at  the  map  is 
alone  sufficient  to  establish  the  claim  of 
Smyrna.  Is  it  not  obvious  that  Larissa 
and  Magnesia  in  ^olis  are  Larissa  and 
Magnesia  in  Thessaly  over  again,  both 
as  regards  their  relative  position  and  the 
mountain  between  them,  that  they  are 
named  from  them  and  peopled  from  them  ? 
And  is  not  '*  Larissseus  Achilles"  the  hero 
of  the  *'  Iliad  "?  And  is  not  Mount  Sipylos 
the  home  of  the  Pelopidae.  And  did  not 
Pelops's  charioteer  give  name  to  ''  divine 
Killa"?  And  cannot  we,  from  his  own 
words,  picture  to  ourselves  the  imaginative 
boy-poet  shudderingly  hearing  the  wrath- 
ful groans  of  the  buried  fiend  of  Arima  at 
every  sigh  of  the  wind  in  the  woods  of 
Hyle,  and  imagining  to  himself  the  shape 
of  poor  Niobe  in  the  frowning  rocks,  and 
dreaming  of  the  dances  of  the  nymphs  on 
the  banks  of  the  pleasant  stream  that  the 
Dolopian  settlers  had  named  from  their  own 
and  from  the  Seiren  mermaids  that  made 
its  waters  perilous,  and  gave  to  each  splash 
of  the  overgrown  sacred  fish  its  mother- 
•instilled  terror  for  the  little  rustic  urchin  ? 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer,     245 
Even  so  Beattie  sings  of  his  Edwin  : — 

"  When  the  loud-sounding  curfew  from  afar, 
Loaded  with  loud  lament  the  lonely  gale, 
Young  Edwin  lighted  by  the  evening  star, 

Lingering  and  listening  wander'd  down  the  vale, 

Or  when  the  setting  moon  in  crimson  dyed, 
Hung  o'er  the  dark  and  melancholy  deep, 

To  haunted  stream  remote  from  man  he  hied. 
Where  fays  of  yore  their  revels  wont  to  keep. 

And  there  let  fancy  roam  at  large." 

Next,  bearing  in  mind  that  Ithaca 
stands  in  Homeric  allegory  for  Smyrna, 
let  us  briefly  compare  the  geography  of 
the  two.  And  can  we  doubt  that,  as  Ithaca 
is  Smyrna  town,  so  Neios  is  Naulochus  ? 
Of  course  they  are ;  Neios  and  Nau- 
lochus both  mean  "  ship-haven.'*  Now 
take  the  lines  : — 

*'  Aground  my  ship  lieth 
Aloof  from  the  city 
In  Riverbed  harbour, 
'Neath  woody  Ship  Hill."  * 

Can  we  doubt  that  we  have  here  a  fine 
picture  taken  from  nature  of  Naulochus 
(ship-haven),  lying  aloof  from  Smyrna  just 

*  Odyss.,  i.  185-6. 


246     The  Complete  Life  of  Homer, 

where  the  river  Meles  flows  into  the  gulf, 
with  a  hill,  and  a  woody  hill  too,  just  as  at 
Weston-super-Mare,  giving  name  to  Hyle 
(Woodlands)  where  our  worthy  friend 
Tychius  dwelt. 

And  now  let  me  introduce  Alcibiades, 
of  Smyrna,  commonly  called  Quintus 
Smyrneeus,  to  the  reader.  All  we  know 
of  him  is  derived  from  the  inscription 
upon  his  tomb,  written  in  close  imitation 
of  Homer : — 

"  '  Here  earth  covers  the  sacred  head 
That  sang  of  the  heroes 
Divine  '* — Alcibiades." 
•*  A.U.C.M.L.f     Atalante 
To  her  dear  Patron  at  the  end  of  his  honourable 

life, 
Has  set  up  this  monument." 

(Another  proof,  this,  that  Homer's  tomb 
was  the  duly  signed  and  dated  one  the 
reader  has  already  seen  at  the  end  of 
Chapter  HI.) 

Atalanta,  so  named  from   his   beloved 


*  Quoted  from  Homer's  tomb.     See  supra, 

t  Hitherto   absurdly  misread   A.U.R.E.L.     As  iT 

Aurelia  Atalante  were  not  as  absurdly  impossible  a 

name  as  (say)  Elizabeth  Pausanias. 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer,     247 

mythology,  set  up  the  above  to  her  former 
master,  A.U.C.M.L.,  i.e.,  297  b.c.  He 
seems  to  have  died  in  Calabria,  and  to 
have  been  buried  at  Naples,  in  imitation 
of  Virgil,  on  whose  monument  we  read  : — 

''  Calabri  rapuere  ;  tenet  nunc    • 
Parthenope ; " 

and  to  have  called  himself  the  Homeric 
Fifth,  and  the  Fifth  Smyrnean,  in  imita- 
tion of  Ennius,  who,  in  one  of  his  lost 
poems,  imagines  himself  to  be  a  fifth 
Metempsychosis  of  Homer.  He  was  born 
at  Smyrna.  In  one  passage  he  pictures 
himself  as  "  tending  his  sheep  on  the  plains 
of  Smyrna  by  the  temple  of  Diana,  on  a 
hill,  not  very  high,  nor  yet  very  low."* 
This  passage  explains  the  line  that  has 
puzzled  all  the  commentators,  speaking  of 
Ithaca  : — 

KvTi\  de  ^da^aKrj  TrarvnepraTrj  ew  aXi  Keirai 

*'  And  it  lies  at  the  bottom  of  a  hill  rising  to  its 
highest  elevation  as  you  get  close  to  the  seaboard."  t 

I  will    not  weary  the   reader  with  dis- 
cussing the  tedious  performance  of  Aris- 

*  Quintus  Smyrnaeus,  "  Posthomerica." 
t  Odyss.,  ix.  45. 


248     The  Complete  Life  of  Homer. 

teides,  trusting  I  have  proved  my  point 
without  it.  But  one  word  of  **  the  temple 
of  Artemis,  in  a  garden  free  to  the  public  "* 
as  at  Trezene,  according  to  the  charming 
description  in  Euripides's  "  Hippolytus." 
Does  not  this,  I  ask,  admirably  harmonise 
with  Homer  s  hymn  to  Artemis,  discussed 
elsewhere  ?  She  comes  from  her  temple 
on  the  hill  down  to  the  river,  and  there 
delivers  the  poor  mother  in  the  cruel  pangs 
of  child-birth. 

Again,  Herodotus  tells  us  that  Theseus, 
a  descendant  of  Eumelus,  the  son  of 
Admetus,  was  foremost  and  wealthiest 
amongst  the  founders  of  Smyrna,  and 
named  the  new-born  city  from  his  Ama- 
zonian wife,  Smyrna,  who,  like  Mason's 
wife,  Hyrnetho,  doubtless  an  Amazonian, 
subsequently  became  the  heroine  Epony- 
mus  of  the  place,  and  had  a  shrine  on  the 
banks  of  the  Meles.  What  more  natural 
than  that  the  poet  that  was  born  on  those 
banks  should  commemorate  the  unparal- 
leled nobility  of  his  descent  as  follows  : — 

"  Iphthime  offspring  of  Icarius'  bed. 
Whom  ere  he  went  to  Troy  Eumelus  wed ; " 


•  Quintus  Smyrnseus,  *'  Posthomerica." 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer.     249 

thus  making  Theseus  everything  that  was 
most  splendid  in  point  of  ancestry,  de- 
scended, as  he  was,  by  Iphthime,  from 
Perieres  and  Gorgophone,  that  is,  from 
Atlas  on  the  one  side  and  from  Perseus 
and  Inachus  on  the  other,  and  by  Eumelus 
from  Admetus  and  Cretheus,  and  ^olus 
and  Deucalion. 

One  more  proof,  and  I  have  done.  Does 
any  one  doubt  my  view  of  Homer's  story 
of  Niobe  }  If  he  does,  then  let  him  read 
it  by  the  side  of  that  of  Alcibiades  of 
Smyrna,  commonly  called  "  Quintus  Smyr- 
naeus,"  and  he  can  doubt  no  longer. 
Smyrnaeus's  (''Posthomerica,"  i.  293-306)  is 
merely  an  expansion  of  Homer's  (''  II." 
xxiv.  614-617)  from  four  lines  to  fourteen, 
and  evidently  taken  at  the  same  time  from 
nature  and  from  Homer  s  miniature,  which 
must  also,  therefore,  have  been  taken  from 
nature,  though  less  distinctly,  being  a  re- 
miniscence only. 

Lastly,  Nemesis  was  especially  called 
Smyrnaean.  But  Nemesis  was  the  mother 
of  Helen,  and  the  whole  cycle,  especially 
as  treated  by  Homer,  might  well  be  en- 
titled **  Nemesis."  This  surely  goes  to 
show,  amongst  other  things,  the  close  con- 


250     The  Complete  Life  of  Homer. 

nexion  between  Homer  and  the  cycle  and 
Smyrna  and  Nemesis;  in  other  words, 
either  that  Smyrna  worshipped  Nemesis 
because  Homer  wrote  of  her  doings,  or 
that  Homer  wrote  of  Nemesis  because  she 
was  the  patron  goddess  of  his  native  city, 
as,  indeed,  in  a  sense  she  was,  for  never 
had  city  such  reverses,  or  writhed  so  sorely 
beneath  her  avenging  scourge — one  or 
the  other.  In  other  words,  Homer  was 
veritably  Smyrnseus. 

Nothing  shows  better  the  difference  of 
Chios  and  Smyrna  than  a  comparison  be- 
tween the  coins  minted  at  Smyrna  and 
Chios  in  honour  of  our  poet.  The  coins 
of  Smyrna  have  upon  them  the  river  God 
Meles  and  the  nymph  Kretheis — the  one, 
I  presume,  on  the  one  side,  and  the  other 
on  the  other.  That  is,  Smyrna  distinctly 
asserts  that  Homer  was  brought  forth  by 
Kretheis  on  the  banks  of  the  Meles.  The 
coins  of  Chios,  on  the  contrary,  have  on 
the  one  side  Homer,  now  an  old  man,  with 
his  immortal  work,  the  "  Kuklos,"  in  his 
hands,  and  on  the  other,  the  Sphynx 
grasping  a  lyre.  That  is,  the  Chians 
assert  with  perfect  truth  that  Homer,  now 
on  the  shady  side  of  fifty,  composed  his 


» 


The  Complete  Life  of  Ho7ner,     251 

immortal  poems  there,  and  that  he  died  at 
los,  a  victim  to  the  riddle  of  the  Sphinx 
that  even  he  failed  to  solve.  This  inci- 
dent, in  a  modern  biographer's  eyes  so 
trivial  that  he  would  be  ashamed  to  men- 
tion it,  the  ancient  Greeks  dwelt  upon  with 
strange  persistency ;  the  Delphic  oracle 
foretold  it,  Delphico  more,  sixty  years  or  so 
after  the  event ;  all  Homer's  biographers, 
from  Herodotus  to  Tzetzes,  mention  it ; 
and  just  as  Blind  CEdipus  and  Blind 
Homer  became  proverbial  for  riddle- 
solving,  so  the  oldest  enigma  in  the  world, 
the  Sphinx's,  and  the  next  oldest,  the  Ian 
fisher-lads',  became  proverbial  for  brain- 
splitting  difficulty.  Even  as  Alcaeus  the 
Messenian  puts  it : — 

"  Once  the  fisher-lads  of  los 
Dumbfoundered  the  Maeonian  bard, 
With  the  help  of  his  own  Muses, 
Having  set  him  a  conundrum." 

This  is,  I  think,  a  very  fair  poetical  ex- 
planation of  the  figure  of  the  Sphynx  and 
the  Lyre  on  the  Chian  coinage. 

Hundred-gated  Thebes,  in  Egypt,  is, 
indeed,  the  only  city  that  really  disputes 
with  Smyrna  the  honour  of  being  the 
birthplace    of    Homer.      Heliodorus,     in 


252     The  Complete  Life  of  Homer. 

two  places  of  his  **  yEthiopica,"  and  Alex- 
ander of  Paphos,  declare  that  he  was 
born  at  Thebes.  As  also  does  Antipater 
Sidonius  in  his  epigram  on  Homer's  statue, 
and  Olympiodorus  apud  Photium  and 
Johannes  Podasimus  in  his  "  Scholia"  on 
Hesiod's  ''Shield  of  Hercules,"  and  Chal- 
cidius  in  his  ''  Commentary  on  the  Timaeus 
of  Plato."  And  Lucian,  an  incomparably 
higher  authority  than  any  of  these,  says 
quite  truly :  **  Either  Smyrna  or  the 
Thebaid,'' — much  like  our  "  Either  Porson 
or  the  Devil.'*  But  how  is  this  .'^  The 
Egyptians  here  say  that  his  father  was 
Demasagoras  and  his  mother  ^Ethra,  and 
the  Sibyl  begins  her  prophecy  some  1,500 
years  after  the  event  thus  : — 

*'  Oh !    victorious    Dmasagoras,    all     glorious     and 
crowned  ! "  * 

But  in  the  *'Certamen"  of  Lesches  f  we 
read,  ''the  Egyptians  say  he  was  the  son 
of  Menelachus  the  scribe."  How  is 
this  ?  Light  breaks  in  here  upon  a  very 
dark  place  at  last.  Menelachus  must 
have  been  an  alias  of  Demasagoras.    After 

*  Allatius,  "  De  Patria  Homeri,"  p.  45. 
t  Westermann's  *'  Lives,"  p.  34. 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer,     253 

seducing  and  throwing  upon  the  world 
our  sweet  poet's  simple-hearted  mother^ 
Demasagoras  went,  I  presume,  as  a  military 
adventurer  to  the  land  of  the  Pharaohs. 
Here  he  may  have  thought  it  prudent  to 
drop  his  former  grievously  sullied  name 
for  an  alias,  and  give  himself  out  as  Tele- 
machus,  the  son  of  Persepolis,  the  son 
of  Telemachus,  the  son  of  Ulysses,  by 
Polycaste,  the  daughter  of  Nestor.*  Na- 
turally, Telemachus  I.  had  a  grandson 
Telemachus  H.  Such  was  the  Greek 
custom.  If  you  will  not  believe  me, 
believe  Aristophanes  : — 

"  A  the  son  of  B,  the  son  of  A  the  son  of  B," 

And  see  Bentley's  "Phalaris"  thereupon. 
See  also  Stemmas  innumerable  in  Dr. 
Smith's  "  Biographical  Dictionary"  and 
elsewhere.  And  this  proves  my  inference 
that  Telemachus  was  in  his  stemma. 
Else  why  should  he  have  taken  that 
name  ?  It  also  satisfactorily  explains  why 
some,  I  presume  the  good  people  of 
Ithaca  and  thereabouts,  said  he  was  the 
son  of  Telemachus,  by  Epicaste,  being  so 
only  according  to  Demasagoras' s  made-up 

*  Hesiod's  "  Fragments." 


254     The  Complete  Ltfe  of  Horner, 

tale  and  not  really  so.  And  the  Egyp- 
tians being  more  familiar  with  the  name 
of  Menelaus  than  with  that  of  Telemachus, 
jumbled  up  the  two  names  into  Mene- 
lachus.  Last  of  all,  Demasagoras  like  the 
versatile  Graeculus  of  Juvenal : — 

**  Grammaticus,  rhetor,  geometres,  pictor,  aliptes, 
Augur,  schoenobates,  medicus,  magus," 

now  a  grazier  on  the  banks  of  the 
Hermus,  now  a  soldier,  now  a  deputy 
clerk,  turns  prophet  and  marries  one 
i^thra,  who  either  was  or,  after  his 
fashion,  gave  herself  out  to  be,  a  lineal 
descendant  of  the  ^thra,  who  was  with 
Menelaus  in  Egypt.  Read  **Odyss.," 
and  see  how  well  the  two  tales  fit  in. 
But  now  a  Daemon  (Daemon  No.  2)  comes 
upon  the  stage.  But  this  Daemon  was 
Hermes.  **  Nonsense,"  you  say.  No,  only  a 
little  imagination.  For  Daemon  (Aa/^oiaiv) 
read  Daemon  (AaTjjaaiv),  and  for  the  God 
of  Merchants,  read  a  merchant : — 

"  Dedecoris  pretiosus  emptor ; " 

and  we  have  the  *' Story   of  Democritus 
of  Trezene,"*  that  Homer  was  the  son  of 

*  Westermann,  "Lives,"  p.  34. 


The  Complete  Life  of  Ho77zer,    255 

Daemon,  a  merchant.  Demasagoras's  wife 
wife  proved  false  to  him.  Thus  did  right- 
eous Nemesis  punish  him  for  deserting 
poor  Kretheis.  It  may,  however,  have 
only  been  his  humbug,  or  hers.  They 
appear  to  have  been  a  rather  shady  couple. 


CHAPTER  VII. 


HIS    WORKS. 


Homer  wrote  thirteen  works,*  of  which 
only  two,  the  ' '  I  Had  "  and  the  *'  Odyssey, "  are 
in  the  present  day  admitted  to  be  his,  and 
too  many  do  not  admit  even  the  ''  Odyssey." 
Yet  a  comparison  of  the  hymns,  the  Hves, 
and  the  story  of  the  blind  bard  Demo- 
docus  should  leave  us,  even  in  this  hyper- 
sceptical  age,  no  reasonable  doubt  of  it. 
And,  barring  a  few  eccentric  Chorizontes, 
universally  (and  most  jusdy)  despised  in 
their  day  as  ultra-paradoxists,  such  has 
been  the  universal  undoubting  opinion  of 
mankind  till  the  close  of  the  last  century. 
And  the  difference  in  the  poems  is  fully 
accounted  for  by  the  difference  of  circum- 


*  Proclus,  Hesiod,  Tzetzes,  Chiliades. 


The  Co7nplctc  Life  of  Homer,    257 

stances.  The  author  of  the  ''  Iliad  "  was 
young,  healthy,  and  clear-sighted ;  the 
author  of  the  *' Odyssey"  old,  worn  out, 
and  blind.  The  ''  Iliad  "  is  Asiatic  in  its 
myth  (and other) ologies  ;  the  ''Odyssey" 
European  ;  the  ''  Iliad  "  is  addressed  to 
men;  the  '^  Odyssey  "  to  women.  The 
"  Iliad  "  is  Achilles  ;  the  ''  Odyssey  " 
Ulysses.  The  ''  Iliad  "  is  history — 
"  Greece,  Asiatic  and  European,  two  hun- 
dred years  ago  by  a  poet " ;  the  ''  Odyssey '' 
is  a  fairy  tale — the  Greek  version  of 
;'  Arabian  Nights."  Lasdy,  the  ''  Iliad  " 
is  history  ;  the  ''  Odyssey  "  autobiography. 
As  in  the  **  Iliad "  Homer  tells  us  the 
story  of  his  birth  on  the  banks  of  Meles, 
so  in  the  *'  Odyssey"  he  tells  us  the  story 
of  his  exile.  Thus,  by  the  two  most 
touching  and  interesting  incidents  in  his 
life,  he  stamps  his  name  no  less  in- 
geniously than  beautifully  upon  either 
poem. 

But  now  to  proceed  in  due  chronological 
order.  Even  before  his  voyages  to  and 
fro,  our  poet  was  wont  to  muse  in  the 
caves  of  Smyrna,  over  the  sweet  tale  of 
Troy,  and  at  Ithaca,  where  he  fell  blind, 
he  is  said  to  have  invoked  the  shade  of 

s 


258      The  Complete  Life  of  Homer. 

Ulysses,  &c.,*  that  is,  from  this  time  he 
took  his  future  line  as  a  patriotic  poet, 
and  advocated  with  all  his  might  of  song 
the  genuine  orthodox  war  against  the  bar- 
barians, and  internal  concord  between  the 
several  States  of  Hellas. 

At  Colophon  he  fell  blind,  and  returned 
to  his  native  city. 

There  he  wrote  his  charming  hymn  to 
Diana,  the  ninth  of  the  present  series,  and 
one  of  the  three  or  possibly  four  hymns 
that  are  beyond  all  reasonable  dispute  his, 
though  possibly  more  or  less  adulterated 
with  spurious  matter.  Here  he  visited 
Troy,  having  already  made  considerable 
progresswithhis  ''Ilias  Mikra."  And, going 
from  Smyrna,  his  thankless  native  city,  he 
went  to  Neonteichos.  And  there  he  pub- 
lished his  ''  Amphiaraus^s  ride  to  Thebes, 
and  other  poems."  And  from  thence, 
pouring  forth  song  after  song,  he  arrived 
at  Phocaea,  where  he  fell  into  the  spider 
hands  of  Thestorides,  who  cheated  our 
poor  blind  poet  out  of  all  the  labours  of 
his  muse  up  to  this  time.  He  now  went 
to   Bolissus,   and   from   thence  to  Chios,. 

*  Philostratus,  "Heroica." 


The  Complete  Life  of  Ho7ner.     259 

where,  in  the  course  of  the  next  twenty 
years  or  so,  he  wrote  the  ''  Iliad,"  of  which 
the  '*  Ilias  Mikra,"  written  at  Cenchrese 
and  Smyrna,  was  the  rough  outline,  and 
the  ''  Odyssey."  His  marriage  took  place 
whilst  he  was  in  the  midst  of  his 
*'  Iliad.'' 

The  supernatural  and  incomparably  most 
precious  books  of  his  ''Odyssey"  were 
probably  written  early,  possibly  even  at 
Ithaca  ;  but  the  later,  and  autobiographical 
portion,  not  till  quite  towards  the  end  of 
his  life.  At  Chios  also  he  probably  wrote 
the  "  Amazonia,"  and  projected  the  ''  Tele- 
gonia."  After  leaving  Chios,  he  wrote  but 
a  few  more  small  pieces,  which  have  been 
already  discussed,  viz.  :  (i)  "  The  Furnace"  • 
(2)  '^  Eiresione  "  ;  (3)  -  The  Fisher  Lads," 
and  the  last  of  his  hymns, — ''  The  Hymn 
to  Apollo,"  of  which  more  anon. 

To   recapitulate.     His    thirteen    works 
were  as   follows,  with   date  and  place  of 
publication   and    authorities   in    favour  of 
their  authenticity.     H.  for  Herodotus,  L. 
for  Lesches,  T.  for  Tzetzes,  P.  for  Proclus, 
PI.   for  Plutarch,    S.  for  Suidas,    and  A. 
for   Anonymous.     "Life"   (Westermann, 
p.  29)  :— 

s  2 


26o     The  Complete  Life  of  Hoyner. 

1  Cypria  Kolophon,     976     S. 

(Also  Pindar,  Fr.  189;  Aristophanes;  Polybius, 
xxiv.  8;  Aristotle,  '' Rhet.,"  i.  15  ;  and  Plato, 
*'  Euthyphr.,"  p.  12a,  quote  it.  Herodotus  niani- 
fests  an  inclination  to  dispute  its  authenticity, 
on  the  authority  of  Demodamas ;  but  his  argu- 
ments are  singulady  weak.) 

2  Aix  Smyrna,  975        T.  P. 

3  Amphia- 

raus  Neonteichos,  974-3     H.  S.  T. 

4  The  Hymns 

(First 

Series)        Neonteichos,  974-3     H.  T. 

5  Phocais        Phocaea,         973        H. 

6  Ilias  Mikra  Phocaea,         973        H.  S. 

7  Nostoi  Phocaea,        971        S.  P.  (Heyne) 

8a  Batracho- 
myoma- 
chia  Bolissus,         968        H.  PI.  A.  S.  T. 

8b  Kerkopes  Bolissus,  967  H.  P.  T. 

8c  lamboi  Bolissus,  966  H.  P.  S.  T. 

9     Iliad  Chios,  957  All. 

10  Amazonia  Chios,  ?  S. 

11  Odyssey  Chios,  945  All. 

12  Margites  Kolophon,  944  H.  P.  T.  Pl.A.L. 

13  Epigrams  Chios,  944  All. 


I 


The  Complete  Life  of  Ho7ner,     261 

If  we  class  8a,  8b,  and  8c  under  the 
common  name  of  Paignia  (see  *'  Lives," 
pp.  24,  27,  33),  we  get  the  veritable 
Thirteen  of  Proclus  and  Tzetzes. 

The  '*  Cypria,"  the  *'  Aix,"  the  ''  Iliad," 
the  "Amazonia,"  the '' Ilias  Mikra,"  the 
"  Nostoi,"  the  "  Odyssey,"  and  the  *'  Tele- 
gonia"  constitute  the  Homeric  Kuklos. 
Of  these  the  *'Telegonia"  was  never 
written,  but  the  prophecy  of  the  death  of 
Ulysses  ("  Odyssey,"  xi.  134-137), — 

"  And  from  the  seaboard  death  shall  come  to  thee. 
Worn  out  with  sleek  old  age,  and  prosperous  round 

thee 
Thy  people  shall  attend  thy  funeral," — 

appears  to  contemplate  it,  as  it  was 
doubtless  applied  to  our  poet  himself  It 
may  even  have  originated  the  (so  far  as 
I  can  see)  groundless  and  improbable 
notion  that  his  mother  was  an  Ian.  Com- 
mentators have  erroneously  represented  it 
as  the  prophecy  of  an  Odyssean  Euthanasia. 
It  is  certain  from  "Odyssey,"  xxiii.  281-287 
(from  11.  281  and  287  especially),  that,  in 
spite  of  all  the  delicate  euphemisms  of 
Teiresias,  the  prophecy  distinctly  adum- 
brates the  great  hero's  death,  as  we  have 


262     The  Cofuplcte  Life  of  Homer. 

it  in  Dictys  Cretensis,  book  vi.,  chaps, 
xiv.  and  xv.  ;  in  the  surviving  fragments  of 
Sophocles's  satiric  play,  '*  Odysseus  Acan- 
thoplex  "  (Ulysses  scratched  to  death  with 
a  fish-bone) ;  in  Horace,  bookiii.  odexxix. 
I  ;  Pliny,  vii.  45,  46,  x.  149;  and  count- 
less other  authors  of  undisputed  authority. 

And  now  it  only  remains  to  discuss  the 
history  and  character  of  each  of  the  above 
works. 

First,  of  the  *'Cypria"  (the  Tricks  of 
Venus). 

Proclus  tells  us  that  there  were  eleven 
books  of  this  poem  published.  And 
Athenseus  quotes  the  eleventh.*  But  of  the 
ten  surviving  fragments,  consisting  in  all 
of  less  than  fifty  lines,  five  fragments  of 
thirty-four  lines,  or  somewhat  more  than 
two-thirds  of  the  whole,  are  obviously 
from  the  first  book,  the  argument  of  which 
Proclus  epitomises  thus. 

Jupiter  deliberates  with  Themis  con- 
cerning the  Trojan  War;  and  Eris gathers 
the  fatal  apple  in  the  garden  of  the 
Hesperides,  and  presents  it  at  the  marriage 
of  Peleus  and  Thetis,  wuth  the  laconic  in- 


*  Athenaeus,  xv.  p.  682  e. 


The  Complete  Life  of  Horner.     263 

scription,  *'  Pulchriori."  The  goddesses 
are  all  up  in  arms  at  this,  and  Jupiter  and 
all  the  gods  being  far  too  discreet  to  incur 
the  immortal  resentment  of  all  the  god- 
desses but  one, — the  successful  one, — 
Mercury  conducts  the  three  principal  god- 
desses, Minerva,  Juno,  and  Venus,  to 
Paris,  on  Mount  Ida,  by  the  command  of 
Jove,  there  to  await  his  decision,  and  Paris 
decides  for  Aphrodite,  being  induced  to  do 
so  by  the  hope  of  marrying  Helen. 

The  fragments  are  all  of  surpassing 
beauty.  Fragment  i.  represents  Jupiter 
meditating  the  destruction  of  the  race  of 
heroes  then  oppressing  the  face  of  Mother 
Earth  with  their  bloody  feuds.  Fragment 
ii.,  *'  Eris  in  the  Garden  of  the  Hesperides, 
plucking  the  fatal  Apple,"  we  have  in  the 
National  Gallery,  but  not  in  the  surviving 
works  of  Homer.  Fragments  iii.  and  iv. 
are  parts  of  a  magnificent  portrait  of  the 
Goddess  of  Beauty.  Fragment  v.  **  The 
Story  of  Venus  and  Mars,"  originally  in  the 
'*Cypria,"  and  preserved  in  the  *' Odyssey." 
Fragments  vi.  and  vii.  are  concerning 
Helen  and  her  brothers,  and  her  birth 
by  Jupiter  out  of  Nemesis  or  divine  ven- 
geance.    Homer,  however,   says  nothing 


264     The  Complete  Life  of  Homer, 

of  the  celebrated  allegorical  egg  laid  by 
Nemesis.  That  was  the  ingenious  inven- 
tion of  later  times.  Fragment  viii.  (dis- 
tinctly referred  to  in  "  Iliad."  ii.)  gives 
us  the  death  of  Helen's  brothers,  Castor 
and  Pollux, — no  doubt  a  part  of  the  pre- 
liminary story  of  Helen.  This  last  frag- 
ment is  strangely  mean,  but  the  rest  are 
very  beautiful,  and  every  way  worthy  of 
Homer.  Fragment  ix.  tells  us  of  the 
three  days'  voyage  from  Sparta  to  Troy  of 
the  guilty  pair.  Fragment  x.  describes  a 
banquet  in  which  the  heroes  plan  ven- 
geance, and  Menelaus  consoles  himself  for 
the  loss  of  his  wife  with  copious  draughts 
of  wine.  This  fragment  forcibly  reminds 
us  of  Horace,  book  i.,  ode  vii.  In 
Fragment  i. : — 

*^H>'  C7£  /iupta  ^vXa  K-ara  \Ooru  TrXai^o/Jii^  arcpijjv 
Ytti'woit'  6/3aov)'f )',"  &C. — 

I   unhesitatingly  complete  line  2  with  the 
surely  exquisitely  beautiful  "  uttvcoovt.' 

The  *'Cypria"  of  Stasinus  was  so  called 
because  that  pseudo-poet  was  a  Cyprian  ; 
but  by  the  ''Cypria"  of  Homer  we  must 
understand  the  scheme  of  Almighty  Jove 


T/ie  Complete  Life  of  Homer.      265 

for  the  destruction  of  the  heroic  race 
through  the  instrumentality  of  Cypriaa 
Venus,  whom  Homer,  being  blind  and 
ugly,  worshipped  not.  Even  as  Isaiah 
says  : — 

*'  His  visage  was  marred  more  than  any  man's,  and 
his  form  more  than  the  sons  of  men." 

See  also  Epigram  12. 

Homer  himself  makes  very  significant 
reference  to  the  scope  of  his  earliest  poem 
in  the  fifth  line  of  his  ''Iliad": — 

"  And  the  scheme  of  Jai'e  was  accomplished.'* 

The  '*  Aix  "  (or  Goat)  was  a  continuation 
of  the  '*  Cypria."  Venus  having  a  grudge 
against  Tyndarus  for  neglecting  her  wor- 
ship, the  day  before  the  Greeks  were  to 
set  sail  from  Aulis,  there  was  a  great  hunt, 
celebrated  in  the  most  ancient  Greek  in- 
scriptions, and  here  Agamemnon  killed  the 
goat  sacred  to  Diana.*  This  brought 
down  upon  him  the  vengeance  of  that  in- 
flammable divinity,  only  to  be  allayed  by 
the  sacrifice  of  his  dauahter  at  Aulis, 
which  brought  down  upon   him   the   im- 

*  Ptolemy,  N.H.  5. 


266     The  Complete  Life  of  Homer, 

placable  hate  of  her  mother,  who  dis- 
honoured his  bed  in  his  absence,  and 
treacherously  murdered  him — treachery 
for  treachery — on  his  return  from  Troy. 
It  was  an  execrable  house  from  Tantalus 
downwards.  And  the  vengeance  of  Venus 
was  implacable.  "Aix,"  however,  has  a 
secondary  reference  to  ^^/V-bearing  Jove, 
the  prime  mover  of  all  the  woes,  whose 
mere  tool  Cyprian  Venus  was. 

The  ''  Ilias  Mikra  "  (Short  Iliad)  was  a 
brief  epitome  of  the  Siege  of  Troy,  from 
the  landing  of  Protesilaus  to  the  capture 
of  the  place.  This  appears  clearly  from 
the  two  lines  preserved  by  Herodotus  : — 

*'  I  sing  of  Ilium,  round  whose  lofty  walls 
The  warlike  Danaoi  suffered  long  and  sore." 

The  ''Ilias  Mikra"  of  Lesches  was 
<]uite  a  different  thing.  It  was  not  an 
epitome,  indeed,  at  all.  Homer  refers  to  his 
**  Ilias  Mikra"  in  the  *'  Death  of  Hector"  : 

*'  Beware  lest  thou  provoke  Jove's  wrath  that  day 
When  Paris  and  Apollo  thee  shall  slay." 

"Iliad,"'  xxii.  359,  360. 


From  it  we  have,  besides  the  lines  given 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer.     267 

!us     by     Herodotus,    the    following    very 
singular  fragment : 

"  I  said  that  with  Achilles 
I  ne'er  would  angry  be, 
To  such  a  terrible  extent 
He  was  so  dear  to  me." 

The  Agamemnon  party  had  carried 
things  with  a  high  hand  ;  left  Philoctetes 
to  pine  his  heart  out  in  the  Isle  of  Lemnos, 
and  stoned  Palamedes  to  death.  But 
Achilles,  on  his  return  from  the  capture  of 
the  Chersonese,  was  greatly  incensed,  as 
was  also  Ajax.  Ajax,  however,  was  soon 
fooled  with  soft  words  into  good  hurnour 
again,  but  Achilles  retained  his  resentment 
long,  and  put  the  death  of  Palamedes  to 
an  air  on  his  lyre  that  led  to  very  angry 
words  between  himself  and  Ulysses,  to 
the  great  gratification  of  that  mean,  half- 
blooded  king  of  men — Agamemnon — who 
was  glad  that  the  anger  of  Achilles  had 
lighted  on  any  head  but  his  own.  To 
this  quarrel  we  have  distinct  reference  in 
**  Odyssey,"  viii.  75-82  : — 

'*  The  quarrel  of  Ulysses 

And  Achilles  son  of  Thetis, 
How  once  they  quarrell'd  at  the  feast 
Of  the  immortal  de'ties. 


268     The  Complete  Life  of  Homer, 

"■  While  Trides  chuckled  to  himself, 

*  I  wish  they'd  come  to  blows' ; 
And  thus  began,  by  Heaven's  deep  scheme, 
Of  Greece  and  Troy  the  woes." 

There  are  nine  fragments  in  all  of  the 
"  Ilias  Mikra,"  besides  a  tenth  preserved 
in  our  poet's  "  Epigrams." 

There  is  even  less  doubt  that  Homer 
wrote  an  "  Ilias  Mikra,"  albeit  differing  in 
every  way  from  the  ''Ilias  Mikra"  of 
Lesches,  than  that  he  wrote  a  *'  Cypria," 
albeit  differing  in  every  way  from  t/ie 
''  Cypria "  of  Stasinus.  For,  firsdy,  we 
have  an  allusion  to  it  in  the  *'  Death  of 
Hector,"*  and  an  extract  from  it, — the 
"Wooden  Horse,"t — in  Homer  himself; 
secondly,  two  lines  of  it  are  quoted  by 
Herodotus  as  the  commencement  of  that 
poem ;  thirdly,  to  five  more  Aristophanes 
makes  unmistakeable  allusion  in  his 
'*  Knights,"^  obviously  accounting  them 
Homer's;  fourthly,  ^Eschines  also§  quotes 
half  a  line  out  of  it,  assigning  it  to 
Homer  : — 

"  Word  came  to  the  army." 


*  Iliad,  xxii.  359,  360. 
X  Aristoph.,  "  Equit." 


t  Odyssey. 

§  iEschin.,  **  Oratt." 


T/ie  Complete  Life  of  Homer.     269 

Of  the  ''  Ride  of  Amphiaraus  "  we  have 
only  two  lines  left,  of  which  more  by  and 
by  ;  but  the  subject  would  be  an  attractive 
one  to  our  poet,  and  Herodotus,  Tzetzes, 
and  Suidasare  amply  sufficient  authorities. 
It  is  an  entirely  different  work  from 
the  '*  Thebaid."  The  subject  of  Thebes 
is  one  that  Homer  altogether  eschews. 
Amphiaraus  is  a  sage  driven  to  a  tomb  in 
a  foreign  land  by  a  worthless  woman  acted 
on  by  a  Theban  refugee.  If  we  may  be 
allowed  to  combine  the  account  of  Herme- 
sianax  and  of  Homer,  both  of  which  I 
have  quoted  elsewhere.  Homer's  own  case 
was  sufficiently  similar.  Hyrnetho,  Maeon's 
widow,  was  Eriphyle.  An  unworthy 
second  husband,  at  once  Polynices  and 
i^gysthus.  The  Amazono-Colophonian 
host,  mainly  foreign  foes,  but  partly  exiles 
anxious  to  return  to  Smyrna,  would  exactly 
parallel  the  mixture  of  foreign  foes  from 
the  Peloponnesus  mingled  with  the 
Theban  exiles  under  Polynices.  Amphi- 
araus was  a  better  Balaam,  and  in  Homer 
very  likely  was  swallowed  up  at  the  com- 
mencement of  the  Theban,  just  as  Protesi- 
laus  was  killed  at  the  very  commencement 
of  the  Trojan  war.     I   may  add  that  the 


270     The  Complete  Life  of  Homer. 

important  figure  Theoclymenus  (a  direct 
descendant  of  Amphiaraus)  cuts  in  the 
''  Odyssey,"  where  he  appears  again  and 
again,  and  especially  the  passage  in 
"Odyssey,"  xv.  223-294,  show  the  espe- 
cial interest  with  which  our  poet  regarded 
Amphiaraus,  whose  lineage  he  traces  for 
the  actually  in  Homer  unprecedented 
maximum  number  of  seven  orenerations, 
ranging  in  locality  from  Pylos  to  Argos, 
and  from  Argos  to  Ithaca, — that  is,  over 
all  the  lands  that,  for  his  father's  sake  and 
his  mother's,  and  his  Mentor's  and  his 
Mentes's  sake,  our  poet  loved  with  all  a 
poet's  love  till  thought  and  memory  and 
speech  failed  at  death's  awful  portal. 

And  of  Amphiaraus  he  speaks  thus 
highly : — 

**  Amphiaraus  that  died  for  his  people." 

Homer  is  thinking  of  the  yet  nobler 
Codrus.  I  regret  to  see  that  Liddell  and 
Scott,  in  their  immortal  lexicon,  mistrans- 
late this  word  by  the  idiotically  unmean- 
ing phrase,  *' nation-stirring,"  and  credit 
Nonnus  with  the  sole  use  of  the  immea- 
surably higher,  and  in  this  case  strikingly 


I 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer,     271 

suggestive  epithet  here  set  down.  Amphi- 
araus doubtless  saved  his  people,  as  Codrus 
and  Decius  and  Curtius  did,  by  dying  him- 
self for  them  : — 

"Whom  Jupiter  loved  in  his  heart  of  hearts, 

And  Apollo  with  love  manifold, 
And  yet,  oh  mysterious  Heaven  ! 

He  lived  not  to  be  old  ; 
But  died  before  Thebes, — the  old  story, — 

By  a  wanton  bought  and  sold." 

With  all  this  before  us,  is  it  possible 
to  doubt  the  account  of  Herodotus  that 
Homer  wrote  the  "  Ride  of  Amphiaraus," 
or  to  believe  with  Welcker  that  the  "  Am- 
phiaraus" is  identical  with  the  ''Thebaid" 
of  which,  as  I  conceive  Homer  to  have 
treated  it,  it  was  not,  properly  speaking, 
even  an  incident  ?  Just  as  much  and  just 
as  little  was  it  a  part  of  the  *' Alcmceonis.'* 

Of  the  ''  Phocais"  (Story  of  Phocaea)  we 
have  not  a  syllable  left,  and  no  author  I 
have  access  to  affords  any  hint  of  the  treat- 
ment. One  is  consequently  divided  be- 
tween the  idea  that  the  treatment  was  that 
of  Virgil,  ''  Georg.,"  iv.  388-530,  or  that  of 
Horace,  *' Epode,"  xvi.  15,16;  in  other 
words,  Proteus  and  his  Seals,  or  the  Pho- 
caean  Colony,  perhaps  both.  Its  genuineness 


2^2     The  Co7nplete  Life  of  Homer. 

is  proved  not  only  on  the  authority  of 
Herodotus,  but  also  of  the  Phocaeans,  who 
not  only  assured  Herodotus  of  the  fact, 
but  also  gave  so  gratefully  warm  a  recep- 
tion to  his  grandson,  Terpander,  that  he 
obtained  the  name,  ''Terpander  Phocaeus," 
being  thereby  distinguished  from  the  Ter- 
pander. The  story  told  by  Menelaus  in 
"Odyssey"  v.  is  manifestly  a  passage  from 
the  lost  "  Phocais." 

The  followincf  seems  to  be  a  fraQfment 
of  the  ''  Nostoi  "  (the  Return  of  the  Heroes 
from  Troy)  : — 

*'  Oh,  fool,  to  slay  the  father 
And  leave  the  child  behind." 


-^gysthus  IS  doubtless  here  meant.  The 
miserable  end  of  the  King  of  Men  and 
the  punishment  of  his  murderer  forms, 
we  may  suppose,  the  theme  of  one  of  the 
books  of  this  poem,  to  which  Homer 
refers  in  book  i.  11-13,  of  what  is  un- 
questionably the  sequel  to  it, — the  "  Odys- 
sey." Indeed,  the  first  four  books  of  the 
"  Odyssey"  are  an  ingenious  adaptation  of 
the  *'  Nostoi "  to  that  poem. 

And    now   we   come   to   the    Bolissus 


The    Complete  Life  of  Homer,     273 

poems, — the    "  Batrachomyomachia,"    the 
**  Kerkopes,"  and  the  ''  lamboi." 

The  ''Kerkopes"  (or  Apes)  may  be  dis- 
missed in  a  few  words.  The  tide  alone 
shows  that  it  was  a  satirical  performance 
written  in  a  period  of  great  bitterness  and 
dejection.  Suidas  has  preserved  three 
lines  which  are  believed  to  be  from  the 
"  Kerkopes,"  but  they  are  flat  and  insipid 
to  the  last  degree,  and  totally  unworthy  of 
Homer.  Still  they  have  the  true  Homeric 
ring,  and  I  fear  we  must  give  our  poet  the 
discredit  of  them.  Of  the  "  Kerkopes"  we 
are  enabled  to  rescue  a  second  fragment 
from  the  jaws  of  Time  by  means  of  a 
fragment  of  Pindar.  The  fragment,  as  by 
this  aid  I  venture  to  restore  it,  is  as 
follows  : — 

V.v^  av  ctiva  Tradoireg  araaOaXijjaiy  erjmv 
ll()iooQ  rtoroiai  KnnoKapa  PVffTa^orreg 

^ErTflOinil'   KfOfJCUTTfC  ailK{\lOL(TL  ^t^EVTat. 

(The  words  underlined  are  in  Pindar.) 

**  Then  paying  for  their  folly  penance  due, 
Nodding  with  head  down  on  the  hero's  back, 
The  Apes  were  bound  with  ignominious  fetters." 

The  "  Batrachomyomachia"  (The  Fight 
between     the     P>ogs     and     the     Mice), 


2  74     ^^^^  Complete  Life  of  Homer, 

attributed  to  Homer  by  the  consent  of  all 
the  authorities,  translated  by  Parnell,  and 
universally   believed    to   be    Homer's   till 
the  commencement  of  the  hypersceptical 
period,    has    been    rejected    on   grounds 
more   absurdly  trifling  than   an  ordinary 
reader  would  believe  were  possible.     The 
critics    complain    of  his    talking    of    the 
crowing  of  a  cock,  when  in  his  time  there 
were  no  cocks  in  all  Greece  to  crow.     As 
if  the  device  of   Idomeneus  were    not  a 
cock  ;  as  if  Sophocles  did  not  refer  to  the 
well-known   sleep-dispelling    property    of 
the   cock's   '' shrill    clarion,"   in    a   period 
long  anterior  to  the  birth  of  Homer,  both 
in  his  "  Admetus"  and  elsewhere.     ''  My 
cock,"  says  Admetus,  ''used  to  wake  him 
up  "  (meaning  Apollo)  "  to  go  to  his  work 
at  the  mill ; "  and    in   another   play,   the 
title  of  which  is  uncertain,   he  speaks  of 
*'  the  bird  that  cries,  '  Coccu,  Coccu.'  "     As 
if  many  of  the  ancient  heroes  did  not  go 
by  that  name  ;  as   if  yEschylus,  twice^  at 
least,  and  Aristophanes — ;  as  if  H  omer  him- 
self did  not  tell  us  that  world-known  story  ; 
as  if  he  ever  was  in  Greece.    But  why  waste 
more  space  upon  an  objection  so  wholly 
trivial  ?    ''  But  the  poem  speaks  of  writing 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer.     275 

on  tablets,  therefore  it  cannot  be  Homer's." 
Nay  we  are  expressly  told  (see  Chap,  viii.) 
that  Homer  echarasse,  i.e.,  used  tablets. 
And  besides,  being  as  European  as  he  was 
Asiatic,  he  was  as  likely,  when  he  got  to 
Chios,  an  island  far  on  the  way  to  Greece, 
to  write  on  tablets  as  on  parchment.  He 
probably  wrote  on  both,  on  the  system  that 
I  have  set  forth  elsewhere.  And,  indeed,  his 
blindness  made  tablets  well-nigh  necessary, 
if  even  they  were  not  invented  for  it. 

I  think  while  Homer  was  drudging  his 
heart  out  upon  the  uncongenial  brats  of  a 
sordid,  low-minded  fellow,  whose  name 
history  has  righteously  declined  to  record, 
with  temper  soured  and  spirit  crushed,  his 
genius  may  have  been  under  a  temporary 
cloud ;  much  as  Shakespeare's  was  when 
he  wrote  his  ''Troilus  and  Cressida"  and 
''  Timon  of  Athens."  And,  besides, 
neither  the  sonorous  flow  of  the  Greek 
hexameter  nor  the  sublime  genius  of  our 
poet  are  at  all  suitable  for  aught  so  mean 
as  parody.  Voltaire  has  failed  in  comedy, 
a  branch  of  literature  one  would  have 
thought  altogether  in  his  line,  far  more 
signally  than  Homer  has  in  burlesque,  a 
branch  of  literature  altogether  out  of  his 

T   2 


276     The  Complete  Life  of  Homer, 

line.     Indeed,  he  has  not,  that  I  can  see, 
failed  at  all.     The  ''  Batrachomyomachia'' 
is  not,  it  is  true,  mirth-provoking  in  the 
smallest  degree  ;  to  split  the  sides  of  the 
vulgar  was  utterly  out  of  Homer's  power, 
even  in  the  brightest  hour  of  his  existence, 
much  less  under  his  present  distressing 
circumstances ;    but    it   is   artistic,    enter- 
taining,   thoughtful,    and    improves   upon 
perusal.     It  is,  we  are  told,  a  story  com- 
posed  for    boys.       Beyond   all  question. 
Homer  wrote  it  for  the  delectation  of  his 
youthful    charge   at    Bolissus.      Certainly 
Pigres  did  not  write  it,  for  the  humour  is 
delicate,  not  broad.  Erasmuslike,  not  Rabe- 
laisian.       Besides     the     "  Batrachomyo- 
machia,"  Homer  is  said  to  have  written 
(doubtless    with    the    same    object)    the 
*'  Arachnomachia  "     (the     Fight    of    the 
Spiders),  the  '*  Psaromachia "    (the  Fight 
of    the    Starlings),    and    the     **Gerano- 
machia"     (the     Fight    of    the    Cranes). 
But    surely    these    were     imitations     by 
various   hands,    when    Pigres   first    intro- 
duced the  "  Batrachomyomachia "   at  the 
Carian  court,  and  it  became  for  a  time  the 
rage.       For    attributing    the    "Arachno- 
machia"   and     the    '' Geranomachia "    to 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer,     277 

Homer,  we  have  no  authority  at  all,  and 
for  attributing  the  "  Psaromachia "  we 
have  only  the  weak  authority  of  Suidas ; 
the  words,  **  And  'the  Fight  of  the  Star- 
lings,' and  *the  Seven  Shearings,'"  not 
being  in  the  original  work  of  Herodotus 
at  all,  but  having  been  unwarrantably 
foisted  in  by  Westermann  (see  Wester- 
mann's  *'  Lives,"  p.  13,  note  on  line  320). 
Exactly  so,  some  half-century  or  so  ago, 
"  The  Butterfly's  Ball  "  produced  a 
sensation  in  a  small  way,  and  elicited 
numerous  poems  of  the  same  description, 
€.g.,  "The  Fishes'  Gala,"  *'The  Peacock's 
Banquet."  This  last  was  my  own  con- 
templated contribution  to  the  series,  when 
a  boy  of  some  thirteen  or  fourteen.  Even 
to  this  day  I  remember  a  stanza  of  it, 
wretched  enough  I  am  afraid  : — 

"  The  fishes'  gala  frolickt  o'er, 
Amidst  the  waves'  tempestuous  roar, 

Unawed  by  fear  of  man  ; 
The  dolphins  lept,  the  Tritons  play'd, 
The  one  provok'd,  the  other  stay'd 

The  surge  that  foaming  ran." 

But  it  would  be  ridiculous  indeed  for 
a  New  Zealand  Suidas  of  the  Thirtieth 
Century  to  represent  the   author   of  the 


278     The  Complete  Life  of  Home7\ 


"  Butterfly's  Ball "  as  the  author  also  of 
'*The  Fishes'  Gala"  and  ''The  Peacock's 
Banquet." 

The  ''lamboi"  contained  the  *' Hept^i- 
paktion "  (the  Seven  Shearings),  the 
"  Epikichlides "  (Fieldfares),  and  the 
"Kenoi"  (Empty  Ones).  The  book 
appears  to  have  gone  sometimes  by  the 
title  of  one  piece  and  sometimes  by  that 
of  another,  and  it  is  therefore  a  threefold 
betise  on  the  part  of  Suidas  to  say, 
"  '  The  Fieldfares  '  and  '  The  Seven 
Shearings,'  "  that  is  to  say,  his  '  Iambics/ 
.  .  .  .  the  *  Paignia '  (Poolings) "  ;  as 
if  *'The  Fieldfares"  and  ''The  Seven 
Shearino;s "  were  not  one  as  much  as 
the  other  a  portion  of  his  "  Iambics," 
and  a  portion  of  the  "  Paignia,"  or  as 
if  they  formed  each,  or  even  both  to- 
gether, a  distinct  poem.  Just  so,  Suidas 
represents  an  extempore  epigram,  hardly 
worth  the  pipkin  that  our  poet  was  paid 
for  it, — "  The  Potters," — as  a  distinct 
poem,  instead  of  being  only  one,  and 
that  a  very  unworthy  one,  of  a  series  of 
epigrams.  Still  we  are  highly  indebted 
to  him  for  mentioning  "  The  Amazonia," 
and  "The  Nostoi,"  which  else  we  should 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer,     279 

not  have  known  to  have  been  our  poet's. 
Not  one  line  of  the  ''lamboi"  is  now 
extant,  yet,  all  the  same,  it  supplies 
Homeric  bibliography  with  a  very  inter- 
esting and  important  piece  of  information. 
*'  Heptapaktion,"  or  "  Heptapektike,"  or 
'*  Heptapaktite,"  one  and  all  come  to 
much  the  same  as  the  more  common 
reading,  "Heptapektos  Aix"  (the  Seven- 
times-shorn  Goat).  But  who  was  the 
goat ;  and  what  is  the  meaning  of  his 
beinof  seven  times  shorn }  Turn  we  to 
*' Aulus  Gellius,"  and  we  read  that  a  goat 
was  sacrificed  to  Homer  after  his  death. 
And  why  ?  Because  his  earliest  poem 
was  entitled  "Aix,"  from  the  goat  which 
Agamemnon  slew  in  the  great  hunt 
before  setting  out  for  Troy.  Which  goat 
led  to  the  second  act  of  the  vengeance  of 
Venus  on  the  house  of  Tyndarus — the 
Sacrifice  of  Iphigenia,  the  Adultery  of 
Clytemnestra,  and  the  murder  of  Aga- 
memnon,— the  first  act  of  the  vengeance 
being  the  Rape  of  Helen,  &c.  During  the 
earlier  years  of  Homer's  career,  "  The 
Goat"  was  probably  the  most  celebrated, 
as  it  was  certainly  the  first  published,  of 
his     productions.        Hence,    as    Dickens 


28o     The  Complete  Life  of  Homer, 


gave  himself  the  name  of  **  Boz,"  and  the 
authoress  of  "Moths"  has  given  herself 
the  name  of  ''  Ouida," — and  to  come  more 
closely  to  the  point,  as  Scott  was  known 
as  *'Waverley/'  Butler  as  "Hudibras,"  and 
Swift  as  "Gulliver," — so  for  a  time  Homer 
called  himself  and  was  known  as  "  Aix*' 
(the  Goat).  Hence  the  "Seven-times- 
shorn  Goat"  means  the  poor  blind  poet 
that  was  swindled  by  Thestorides  out  of 
his  seven  poems — the  Pre-Bolissic  "Hepta- 
biblion"  (p.  260,  11.  1-16)  already  com- 
memorated. 

"  Archilochum  proprio  rabies  annavit  iambo." 

The  title  of  the  poem  was  naturally  no 
less  well  adapted  to  the  iambic  metre 
than  the  subject  itself — the  denunciation 
of  a  piece  of  rascality  so  unspeakably  vile 
and  treacherous. 

The  little  piece  with  which  the  volume 
concluded,  called  "  Epikichlides,  or,  the 
Fieldfares,"  because  the  poet  sane;  it  to 
the  delighted  village  lads  of  Bolissus  for 
the  simple  fee  of  some  fieldfares  they  had 
trapped  and  killed  amongst  them,  was 
mainly  iambic,  as  we  learn  from  that  pas- 
sage in  Athenaius,  in  which  he  tells  us 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer,     281 

that  "the  works  of  Archilochus,"  which 
we  know  were  iambic,  ''and  the  greater 
part  of  Homer's  *  Fieldfares,'  were  similar 
in  point  of  metrical  construction."*  And, 
indeed,  their  very  name,  just  like  ''  Hepta- 
paktion,"  suggests  iambic  treatment.  We 
can  even  fancy  the  poet  winding  up  with 
some  such  verses  as  the  following-  : — 


<«  \z . 


Kat  vvv  aoiCrjQ  eyeKEP  lo  Ttaicer  (piXoi 
Tv(pXo>  yepoyri  Cor^  f.tot  rag  ¥j7rit:i^Xtcac." 

**  And  now,  dear  lads,  for  his  minstrelsee, 
Give  his  Fieldfares  to  the  blind  old  man — that's  me." 

But  what  can  Athenaeus  mean  by  "the 
Fieldfares,"  referring  to  the  passions, — evi- 
dently a  good-humoured  sally  for  the  delec- 
tation of  a  pack  of  light-hearted  peasant 
lads  ?  *'Athen3eus  obviously  refers  to  the 
"  Heptapaktion,"  which  formed  the  solid 
pieee  de  resistance,  and  with  reference  to 
which  the  justly-incensed  poet  might  well 
have  written  as  motto  on  the  title-page  : — 

*'  The  Seven  Shearings 

and  other  Poems, 

by  Homerus  Melesigenes. 

Si  natura  negat  facit  indignatio  versum. 

Anno  CCVIII.  post  Trojam  captam  Bolissi 

Scripsit  Bucco." 

*  Athenaeus,  xiv.  4. 


282      The  Complete  Life  of  Homer, 


« 


« 


We  come  now  to  the  poems  written 
durinor  the  few  remaininof  months  of  our 
poet's  Hfe  after  leaving  Chios, — the  ''Mar- 
gites,"  the  "  Kaminos,"  the  '*  Eiresione,"" 
the  "Hymn  to  Apollo,"  and  the  ''Alieis." 

The  '*  Margites  "  must  have  been  a  truly 
splendid  performance.  Certain  miserable, 
low-minded,  purse-proud  sons  of  Belial,  at 
Colophon,  had  taunted  our  poet  with 
havincr  wasted  his  talents  and  made  no 
better  provision  for  his  old  age,  to  say 
nothino-  of  his  wife  and  children,  and 
wanderlnof  about  "  without  visible  means 
of  subsistence,"  singing  catches,  with  a 
voice  broken  by  age  and  want  and  disease, 
for  half-pence  and  scraps  of  bread  and 
meat.  But,  doubtless,  some  good  Sama- 
ritan or  other  gave  him  a  bellyful  of 
broken  meat  that  the  house-dog  had  de- 
clined and  a  stoup  of  wine  that  was  begin- 
ning to  turn  sour,  and  then,  like  Scott's 
immortal  minstrel,  he  burst  forth  into  an 
impassioned  blaze  of  immortal  song. 

The  authenticity  of  the  **  Margites"  is  in- 
disputable.   The  bill  is  backed  by  Proclus,. 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer,     285 

Plutarch,  Anon.  (''  Lives,"  p.  29),  Lesches, 
Aristotle,  Plato,  Hepha^stion,  Tzetzes, 
Harpocration,  Aristophanes,  Allatius,  and 
Bentley. 

But  how  is  it  that  amongst  so  many 
that  attest  the  Homeric  origin  of  the  ''Mar- 
gites "  we  in  vain  look  for  the  venerable 
authority  of  the  ''  Life  of  Lives,"  the  pseudo- 
Herodotus  ?  And  how  is  it  that  Suidas 
assures  us  that  Pigres,  not  Homer,  wrote  it, 
and  that  the  imperial  authoress  of  the  '' Vio- 
larium"  abjudicates  it  ?  Answer  :  Because 
both  Pigres  and  Homer  wrote  it.  Because 
Pigres  engrafted  his  Boccaccioesque 
obscenities  upon  the  venerable  fragments 
of  the  true  ''Margites"  only  one  generation 
at  most  before  the  birth  of  Herodotus.  If 
Herodotus  and  the  pseudo- Herodotus  are, 
as  I  firmly  believe,  one  and  the  same  per- 
son, then  the  pseudo- Herodotus  must  have 
known  this,  but  durst  not  avow  his 
knowledge,  and  therefore  preferred  to  say 
nothing  whatever  on  the  subject. 

Nothing  could  be  more  unlike  than  the 
**  Margites "  of  Pigres,  as  it  appears  in 
Kinkel's  "  Epicorum  Gra^corum  Frag- 
menta,"  and  the  true  "  Margites"  of  our 
immortal  poet,    so  far  as    we   can  judge 


284      The  Complete  Life  of  Homer, 

from  the  few  truly  magnificent  fragments 
remaining  of  it.  Pigres's  "Margites"  was 
intended  to  split  the  sides  of  the  free  and 
easy  Bohemian  Court  of  Halicarnassus 
with  merriment.  Homer's  ''  Margites"  was 
as  far  removed  from  anything  approaching 
to  jocularity  as  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount, 
or  the  minstrel's  sublime  outburst  : — 

"  Oh,  Caledonia,  stern  and  wild  !  " 

As  will  plainly  appear  from  the  following 
•outline  of  the  Death-note  of  the  Wild 
Swan  of  the  Meles  that  Piores  travestied 
some  four  centuries  after  into  obstreperous 
cacklings  : — 

An  aged  man  and  a  divine  minstrel,  the 
servant  of  the  Muses  and  of  far-darting 
Apollo,  came  to  Colophon  with  a  melo- 
dious lyre  in  his  well-practised  hands. 
This  old  man  was  Homer;  this  old  man 
was  Margites.  Homer  was  fond,  we 
know,  of  this  bitter  self-pleasantry.  When 
young  he  had  called  himself  the  '*  Goat." 
As  we  have  not  one  single  line  of  his 
poem,  so-called,  I  have  only  been  able  im- 
perfectly to  explain  why ;  but  the  reason 
that  most  commends  itself  to  my  judgment 
is   that,  just   as  the  children  of  Belial  at 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer.     285. 

Samaria  cried  out  to  Elisha,  '*  Go  up,  thou 
bald  head,"  so  the  children  of  Belial  at 
Smyrna  and  Cyme  (the  Chorazin  and 
Bethsaida  of  Philo- Homeric  hagiology) 
cried  after  our  poet,  "  There  goes  the 
goat ;  there  goes  the  blind  old  billy-goat  !"^ 

*'  Nil  habet  infelix  paupertas  durius  in  se 
Quam  quod  ridicules  homines  facit." 

Tattered,  squalid,  with  sightless  eyes,  stag- 
gering gait,  and  neglected  beard,  who  can 
wonder  that  he  was  an  object  of  wicked 
derision  to  these  wretched  brats  ?  Where 
the  parents  were  brutal,  can  we  wonder 
that  the  children  were  unmannerly  ?  Where 
the  parents  denied  him  food  and  lodging, 
can  w^e  wonder  that  the  children  should 
call  out  after  him  ?  Where  the  parents 
jeered  at  his  blindness,  can  we  wonder  that 
the  children  laughed  at  his  beard  ?  The 
children  bawlinof  out  after  him,  and  the 
parents  refusing  him  bread,  make  two- 
well-matched  pictures  of  the  Cimmerian 
darkness  of  Calibandom  in  all  the  moral 
obscenity  of  its  demi-savage  ignorance,, 
"naked,  and  not  ashamed." 

Even  so  he  caught  up  the  ruffian  taunt 
of  the  Dogberrys  of  Cyme,  and  ever  after 
accentuated  his  name  (not  Homeros,  but 


286     The  Complete  Life  of  Homer, 

Homeros),  not  to  signify  hostage,  as  before, 
but  blind  beggar.  Oh !  what  an  awful 
day  must  that  have  been  for  him  when  he 
was  thus  twice  outraged ;  and  now  he 
caught  up  the  taunt  so  often  hurled  against 
the  children  of  genius  by  dull  common- 
place blockheadry,  and  wrote  his  "  Fool." 
''  This  fool,"  our  poet  goes  on  to  say,  '*  the 
gods  made  neither  a  digger  nor  a  plougher, 
nor  good  for  anything  in  the  Varsal  world. 
He  could  only  keep  on  singing  and  beg- 
ging till  p'liceman  A  bade  him  'move  on!"* 
Only  that.  This  is  all  we  have  of  Homer's 
portrait  of  himself  at  seventy. 

Against  it  he  sets  the  true  fool,  who 
knows  how  to  do  a  great  many  things,  but 
knows  none  of  them  thoroughly.  ''Jack 
of  all  trades,  master  of  none,"  the  most 
perfect  possible  antithesis  to  the  poet 
who  knew  but  one  thinir,  but  knew  that 
as  no  other  man  ever  did  or  ever  will, 
either  before  or  after  him.  In  other  words, 
the  poem  might  have  been  called,  "  The 
so-called  Fool,  but  really  Wise,  and  the  so- 
called  Wise  but  really  Fool."  The  marvel- 
lously wise  old  man  Margites  says  really 
clever  things  with  a  mock  air  of  folly, — 
e.g.,  "  Who  is  the  true  begetter  of  a  man, 


The  Complete  Life  of  Hojiier,     287 

who  has  the  greater  part  in  the  child, — 
his  father  or  his  mother  ? "  As  we  all 
know,  a  favourite  doubt  amonirst  the 
ancient  philosophers.  Polypragmon,  on 
the  contrary,  the  Colophonian  Dogberry, 
says  really  asinine  commonplaces  with  a 
mock  air  of  wisdom.  The  piece  ends,  of 
course,  in  the  ignominious  overthrow  of 
the  grovelling  on  all  fours  pseudo-political 
economy  of  three  thousand  years  ago. 

And  now  let  the  very  cleverest  of  my 
readers  ponder  on  the  account  given  of 
*'  Margites  "  in  Kinkel's  "  Epicorum  Frag- 
menta,"  pp.  67-69,  and  summon  his  utmost 
power  of  clairvoyance  to  bear  upon  it.  Can 
he  reconcile  what  he  finds  there  ?  Thoucfh 
he  dilates  his  eyes  to  their  very  utmost,  I 
am  sure  he  cannot.  In  the  hands  of 
Pigres,  the  marvellously  wise  old  man  of 
Tzetzes  sinks  into  the  idiotic  Mar^rites  of 
Eustathius,  his  Socratic  irony  becomes 
drivelling  folly,  and  the  divine  minstrel 
becomes  the  lauQ^hincr-stock  of  the  Attic 
stage  for  the  preposterous  lunacy  of  his 
second  childhood.  In  brief,  the  Margites 
of  Homer  is  a  Julian  mockingly  accept- 
ing the  ill-bred  taunts  of  the  frivolous 
mob  of  Antioch  only  the  more  effectually 


288     The  Complete  Life  of  Homer, 

to  confute  the  foes  of  ''divine  philosophy" 
and  lash  them  with  righteous  scorn.     The 
Margites  of  Pigres,  on  the  contrary,  is  a 
Handy  Andy,  a  Wise    Man   of  Gotham. 
Homer  wrote  a  *'  Defence  of  Poetry,"  an 
'*  Apologia  pro  Vita  sua."     Pigres  wrote  a 
witty  burlesque, — a  masterpiece  of  Boccac- 
cioesque  obscenity.    No  wonder  Aristotle 
and    Plato,  and   those   that  contemplated 
only  the  unmistakably  Homeric  fragments 
still  remaining,  should  unhesitatingly  pro- 
nounce  the     "  Margites  "    the    work    of 
Homer,  whilst  Suidas  and  P2udocia,  and 
those    who    looked    rather    at    the    gro- 
tesque and  plainly  unhomeric  elements,  as 
unhesitatingly  pronounced  it  the  work  of 
Homer's   ape,    Pigres,    the    Interpolator. 
And  this  is  what  Lucian  means  when  he 
mockingly  says  that  Pigres  or  Tigres  was 
Homer  s  father,  because   Homer's  ''  Paig- 
nia  "  —  the     ''  Batrachomyomachia,"     the 
*'  Margites,"    and    perhaps    others — were 
thus  fathered  upon  him. 

And  now  we  come  to  the  Hymns,  three 
of  which,  "To  Apollo,"  "To  Diana,"  and 
"  To  Ceres,"  I  believe  to  be  Homer's.  Of 
this  last  only  a  part  remains  ;  for  Pausanias 
has  certain  lines  out  of  it  in  his  "  Mes- 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer.     289 

seniaca"  that  we  no  longer  have.  They 
are  all  of  them  worthy  of  our  great  poet, 
and  bear  strong  internal  marks  of  authen- 
ticity. The  "  Hymn  to  Mercury  "  is  more 
questionable.  It  has  the  irresistible  autho- 
rity of  Shelley ;  and  Shelley  was  not  to 
be  imposed  upon  by  any  name,  however 
great.  He  told  Byron  to  his  face  that  his 
*' Deformed  Transformed  "  was  the  worst 
thing  he  had  ever  written,  and  borrowed 
too, — an  inferior  rechauffe  of  Goethe's 
"  Faust."  Nor  did  he  hesitate  to  pro- 
nounce, no  doubt  rightly,  the  "  Two 
Noble  Kinsmen,"  whether  pardy  Shake- 
speare's or  not,  a  wholly  worthless  per- 
formance. But  he  thought  the  "Hymn 
to  Mercury"  well  worth  translation,  and 
it  is  certainly  a  most  agreeable  and 
entertaining  performance.  Still,  as  Dr. 
Ihne  observes,  it  bears  internal  marks 
of  not  being  Homer's,  and  we  have 
four  reasons  for  assigning  it  to  7>rpan- 
der:  (i)  Its  great  excellence.  (2)  Its 
being  to  Hermes,  Terpander's  god  of 
gods.  (3)  Its  mention  of  the  seven- 
stringed  lyre,  Terpander's  especial  inven- 
tion. (4)  Terpander's  direct  descent  from 
Homer  renders  it  the  more  probable  that 

u 


290     The  Complete  Life  of  Homer, 

his  chef-d'oeuvre  should  be  added  to  his 
immortal  ancestor's  works. 

And  now  we  come  to  our  poet's  last 
work  of  all, — *'  Hymn  to  Apollo."  Homer 
wrote  this  hymn  previous  to  leaving  Samos 
for  Athens,  with  a  view  to  recitation  at 
Delos,  when  he  touched  at  that  island  on 
his  way  thither.  Unhappily,  unfavourable 
winds  somewhat  deflected  him  from  his 
course  to  los,  and  there  he  died,  his 
**  Hymn  to  Apollo  *'  unrecited,  his  visit  to 
Athens  unpaid.  The  following  is  the  order 
in  which  the  islands  and  cities  between 
Athens  and  Crete  come  in  Homer  (of  the 
mountains  I  take  no  account): — i,  Aigina  ; 
2,  Euboia;  3,  Aigai ;  4,  Peiresiai ;  5,  Pe- 
parethos ;  6,  Samothrace ;  7,  Skuros ; 
8,  Phokaia ;  9,  Imbros  ;  10,  Lemnos  ; 
II,  Lesbos;  12,  Chios;  13,  Korukos ; 
14,  Klaros ;  15,  Samos;  16,  Miletos ; 
17,  Cos;  18,  Knidos;  19,  Karpathos  ; 
20,  Naxos  ;  21,  Paros  ;  22,  Rhenaia ;  23, 
between  Chios  and  Corycus,  Erythrae,  at 
the  foot  of  Mount  Mimas,  by  implication. 

Now,  which  of  these  is  unworthy  of 
mention  ?  Aigina,  the  native  seat  of  the 
-^acidae,  and  deriving  its  name  from  the 
sacred  Aigis  of  the  god  of  the  Cretan  sea, 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer.     291 

—Jove,  to  whom,  next  only  to  Crete  itself, 
it  was  sacred  ?  Euboia,  the  greatest 
island  in  the  Aigaian  sea  ?  Aigai,  that 
gave  the  Aigaian  sea  its  name  ?  Peire- 
siai and  Peparethos,  rivals  in  the  produc- 
tion of  **  wine  that  maketh  glad  the  poet's 
heart,"  and  inspires  his  joyous  lay  ?  Samo- 
thrace, the  home  of  the  mysteries  of  the 
Cabiri  ?  Phokaia,  the  theme  of  the  ''  Pho- 
cais  "  .^  Imbros,  with  traditions  so  similar 
to  those  of  our  own  poet's  native  Smyrna, 
a  harbour  of  the  same  name  as  Smyrna 
had  of  old, —  Naulochus,— and  an  eyot  in 
front  of  it,  with  a  wicked  giant,  the  Typhon 
of  the  ^gean,  howling  beneath  its  crust } 
Lemnos,  the  seat  of  Vulcan  and  the  love- 
tryst  of  Hupnos  ?  Lesbos,  the  first  home 
of  the  yEolian  emigrants  'i  Chios,  Homer's 
own  home  ?  Erythrce,  the  home  of  the 
Sybil,  all  hospitable  welcome  to  our  poet  at 
the  foot  of  Mount  Mimas,  named  from  his 
celebrated  yEolid  ancestor  ?  Corycus,  the 
native  place  of  the  nymph  beloved  by 
Apollo,  from  whom  the  Corycian  cave  on 
Mount  Parnassus  derived  its  name,  and 
from  whom  the  Muses,  too,  were  called 
Corycidae  Nympha.^  ?  Klaros,  so  promi- 
nently connected  in  the  "  Hymn  to  Artemis" 

u  2 


292      The  Complete  Life  of  Homer, 

with  our  poet's  birth  on  the  banks  of  the 
Meles  ?     Samos,  where  he  was  now  re- 
siding, and  from  whence  he  was  about  to 
set    sail  ?     Miletus,    the    Alma    Mater  of 
Asiatic  Greek  literature  ?     Cos  Meropis, 
so  called  because  there  first  Merops,  a  son 
of  the  earth,  was  endowed  with  a  human 
voice, — in  other  words,  because  there  first 
the  gods  gave  to  man  the  gift  of  articulate 
speech  ?     Cos,  the  seat  of  the  Asclepiadce, 
the  descendants  of  him  that  was  the  dearest 
to  Apollo  of  all  his  children,  and  through 
whom,  as  Pausanius  shows,  our  poet  claimed 
kindred  with   them    thus :— Antideia,   the 
daughter  of  Diodes,  married  Machaon,  the 
son  of  yEsculapius,  and  by  him   became 
the  ancestress  of  the  Asclepiada^  :    hence 
our  poet's  reference  to  the  story  of  Panda- 
reus,  of  Cos,  who  pledged  Jupiter's  golden 
dog  with  Tantalus  the  Bad,  and  then  could 
not  get  it  back ;  for  which  the  thief  was  swal- 
lowed up  alive  like  Dathan  and  Abiram, 
and  the  roguish  broker  delivered  up  to  the 
torments  of  his  mortal  foe  ?    Knidos,  one  of 
the  two  principal  seats  of  Venus, —  Knidos, 
the  capital  of  the  Dorian    Hexapolis,  but 
founded    by    Triopas,    one   of    the    early 
Argive  kings,  many  ages  before  the  Trojan 


The  Complete  Life  of  Llomer.    293 

war?  Karpathos,  that  gave  name  to  the 
Karpathian  sea  ?  Naxos,  so  celebrated  in 
the  myths  of  Theseus  and  Ariadne,  devoted 
to  the  worship  of  Bacchus,  and  abounding 
in  corn,  wine,  oil,  and  fruit,  whose  eight 
distinct  names  alone  show  its  great  import- 
ance ?  Paros,  celebrated  for  its  marble,  on 
which  all  the  marvels  of  bygone  history  were 
inscribed,  and  from  which  doubtless  came 
the  meirble  on  which  was  inscribed  our 
poet's  ambiguous  epitaph  ?  Or,  lastly, 
little  Rhensea,  a  chain's  length  only  from 
Delos, — weasel-less,  guineafowl-less  Rhe- 
ncea,  that  Apollo  loved  so  dearly  ? 

Could  a  better  selection  of  names  pos- 
sibly have  been  given,  or  possessing 
greater  interest  for  the  Homeric  biblio- 
grapher ?  Especially  if  we  reflect  that  in 
Homer's  time  Apollo  was  the  god  of  wine 
(as  inspiring  the  poet's  lay),  not  Bacchus. 
Hence  the  mention  of  the  principal  wine- 
growing islands, — Peparethos,  Lemnos, 
Lesbos,  Chios,  and  Naxos.  Nor  will  any 
thoughtful  reader  be  disconcerted  by  the 
appearance  of  the  names  of  mountains  of, 
to  us,  but  little  interest  or  significance,  e.g.^ 


*  Hor.,  Od.,  III.  xxviii.  12,  13. 


294     ^'^^  Co77tplete  Life  of  Ho7}ier. 

Akrokane,  Aigageai,  and  Mycale,  when 
he  reflects  what  a  prominent  figure  moun- 
tains make  in  the  habitat  of  the  gods  and 
their  intercourse  with  man  ;  that  on  their 
summits  sacrifice  was  offered  to  the  gods, 
and  in  their  cool  caves  the  sacred  poet 
mused  and  sang. 

But,  above  all,  note  the  prominence 
given  to  Lesbos  and  Chios,  each  occupy- 
ing one  entire  line,  the  former  as  the  an- 
cestral seat  of  our  poet's  race,  the  latter  as 
the  place  of  his  abode  durinof  the  last 
twenty  or  four-and-twenty  years  of  his 
life. 

"And  Chios,  dear  Chios,  the  fairest  by  far 
Of  all  the  green  islands  that  lie  in  the  sea," 

needs  no  remark  of  mine  to  emphasise  its 
deep  significance.     But  — 

"  And  goodly  Lesbos,  the  ancestral  seat 
Of  Makar,  worthy  son  of  .-^^olus," 

requires  a  few  words. 

**  Makar  founded  Lesbos  after  the 
flood."*  From  this  Makar,  the  tutelary 
hero  of  the  aborigines,  the  Makar  of 
Homer's  date   derived    his    name.      The 

*  Suidas,  art.  '*  Makar." 


The  Complete  Life  of  Horner,    295 

Lesbians  called  themselves  .^oliots  or 
.^oliones,  from  their  ancestor,  Aiolos 
or  Piebald,  the  ^olian  beinor  a  mixed 
race.  The  phrase,  Makar  ^^olion,  may 
mean  no  more  than  this ;  but  I  think  it 
means  much  more.  I  think  it  is  history 
packed  very  close.  When  Gras  won  the 
great  victory  that  gave  to  Hellas  the  sea- 
board  of  Asia  Minor,  he  called  his  new-born 
boy  Makar,  in  compliment  to  the  aborigines, 
much  as  our  Edward  called  his  new-born 
boy  Edward  of  Carnarvon,  Prince  of 
Wales.  His  son  was  called  Aiolos  ;  his 
son  w^as  also  called  Makar,  but  to  dis- 
tinguish him  from  Makar  L  with  the  addi- 
tion ^olion,  double-edged,  Graeco  more, 
that  is,  signifying  both  son  of  Aiolos,  his 
father,  and  descendant  of  Aiolos,  as  being 
an  ^oliot.  Just  in  the  same  way  Minos 
called  his  son  Deucalion  (as  being  a  Deu- 
calid  on  the  mother's  side)  and  Orpheus 
gave  his  son  Ortis  the  surname  of  Dorion 
to  attest  his  Dorian  origin. 

The  reader  will  see  the  purport  of  the 
above  remarks  further  on. 

To  be  brief,  the  mentions  we  have  of 
Phocaea,  Imbros,  and  Samos,  and  the 
strikingly    conspicuous  mention  of  Chios 


294     ^^^^  Co77iplete  Life  of  Ho7ncr. 

Akrokane,  Aigageai,  and  Mycale,  when 
he  reflects  what  a  prominent  figure  moun- 
tains make  in  the  habitat  of  the  gods  and 
their  intercourse  with  man  ;  that  on  their 
summits  sacrifice  was  offered  to  the  gods, 
and  in  their  cool  caves  the  sacred  poet 
mused  and  sang. 

^  But,  above  all,  note  the  prominence 
given  to  Lesbos  and  Chios,  each  occupy- 
ing one  entire  line,  the  former  as  the  an- 
cestral seat  of  our  poet's  race,  the  latter  as 
the  place  of  his  abode  during  the  last 
twenty  or  four-and-twenty  years  of  his 
life. 

*'  And  Chios,  dear  Chios,  the  fairest  by  far 
Of  all  the  green  islands  that  lie  in  the  sea," 

needs  no  remark  of  mine  to  emphasise  its 
deep  significance.     But  — 

"  And  goodly  Lesbos,  the  ancestral  seat 
Of  Makar,  worthy  son  of  .'!^:olus," 

requires  a  few  words. 

**  Makar  founded  Lesbos  after  the 
flood."*  From  this  Makar,  the  tutelary 
hero  of  the  aborigines,  the  Makar  of 
Homer's  date   derived    his   name.      The 

*  Suidas,  art.  **  Makar." 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer.    295 

Lesbians  called  themselves  ^oliots  or 
yEoliones,  from  their  ancestor,  Aiolos 
or  Piebald,  the  ^olian  being  a  mixed 
race.  The  phrase,  Makar  yEolion,  may 
mean  no  more  than  this ;  but  I  think  it 
means  much  more.  I  think  it  is  history 
packed  very  close.  When  Gras  won  the 
great  victory  that  gave  to  Hellas  the  sea- 
board of  Asia  Minor,  he  called  his  new-born 
boy  Makar,  in  compliment  to  the  aborigines, 
much  as  our  Edward  called  his  new-born 
boy  Edward  of  Carnarvon,  Prince  of 
Wales.  His  son  was  called  Aiolos  ;  his 
son  was  also  called  Makar,  but  to  dis- 
tinguish him  from  Makar  L  with  the  addi- 
tion ^olion,  double-edged,  Grseco  more, 
that  is,  signifying  both  son  of  Aiolos,  his 
father,  and  descendant  of  Aiolos,  as  being 
an  ^oliot.  Just  in  the  same  way  Minos 
called  his  son  Deucalion  (as  being  a  Deu- 
calid  on  the  mother's  side)  and  Orpheus 
gave  his  son  Ortis  the  surname  of  Dorion 
to  attest  his  Dorian  origin. 

The  reader  will  see  the  purport  of  the 
above  remarks  further  on. 

To  be  brief,  the  mentions  we  have  of 
Phocaea,  Imbros,  and  Samos,  and  the 
strikingly    conspicuous  mention  of  Chios 


296     The  Complete  Life  of  Homer, 

and  Lesbos  go  far  to  prove  the  soundness 
of  our  view,  and  not  less  do  the  names 
that  are  absent.      Thus,   the  absence   of 
Rhodes  and  Colophon  proves  that  Homer 
was  born  at  neither  of  those  places.     The 
absence  of  Smyrna,  the  birthplace  of  our 
poet,  and  of  Cyme,  the  birthplace  of  our 
poet's    mother,   testify  to    the    ungrateful 
neglect  with  which   those   two  cities   dis- 
honoured   their   prophet.      **  Them     that 
honour  me    I    will   honour,  and  they  that 
dishonour  me  shall  be  lightly  esteemed." 
Phocaea  is  here  and  they  are  not ;  Phocaea 
has  the  '*  Phocais"  written   in  its  honour  ; 
Smyrna  and  Cyme  are  never  once  men- 
tioned in  the  whole  range  of  our  poet's 
works,  save  Smyrna,  once  in  the  *'  Hymn  to 
Artemis,"  before  she  for  the  second  and  last 
time  cast  him  out  to  wander  in  want  and 
blindness  and  beggary  over  all  the  coast  of 
Asia  Minor,  and   from  islet  to  islet  till  he 
died.     But  the    absence   of    los    js  even 
more  remarkable  still.      It  could  have  been 
brought  in   so  easily  in  a  thousand  ways. 
Thus,  for  instance  : — 

'*  And  Astypalsea,  and  los,  and  inventive  Amorgos  " — 
which    would    have    been    all    the    more 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer,    297 

natural,  as  the  two  islands  were  originally 
named  from  two  sisters  of  Cadmus  and 
Europa — AstypaL-ea  and  Phcenike. 

How  then  was  it  not  ?  Had  the  hymn 
been  written  after  the  death  of  Homer, — • 
had  it  been  written  by  any  one  but  Homer, 
especially  the  pseudo- Homer, — nay,  had  it 
been  written  by  Homer  himself  a  few 
months  later,  it  must  have  been.  Its  ab- 
sence utterly  discredits  the  account  of  the 
pseudo- Plutarchus,  Ephorus,and  Aristotle, 
based  upon  the  lying  legends  of  the  lans. 
Had  Homer's  mother  been  born  there,  or 
conceived  Homer  there,  or  been  stolen  by 
pirates  from  thence,  or  had  Homer,  after 
his  weary  and  life-long  wanderings,  re- 
turned there  to  die  (much  like  the  butter- 
fly after  depositing  her  eggs),  and  be 
buried  there, — then,  again  I  say,  some  such 
line  as  1  have  interpolated,  must  have 
been  found  in  the  hymn.  Or  had  Homer 
consulted  the  Oracle  as  alleged,  and  learned 
he  was  to  die  at  los,  or  had  he  foreseen  it 
of  himself,  or  even  if  he  had  intended  to 
stop  there,  or  had  not  been  driven  there 
by  stress  of  wind,  then  again — 

*'  And  fish-abounding  los  " — 


298     The  Co7nplete  Life  of  Hoiner, 

would  have  formed  the  commencement  of 
the  last  Hne  but  one  of  the  list  of  islands, 
cities,  and  mountains,  more  especially 
sacred  to  the  god  of  song. 

And  now  let  us  turn  to  the  contest 
between  Hesiod  and  Homer,  and  there  we 
read: — **And  having  stayed  in  the  city" 
(Argos)  *'  a  certain  time,  he  sailed  to  Delos 
to  the  assembly,  and,  standing  upon  the  altar 
of  horn,  he  recited  "  the  hymn  in  question.* 

Now,  the  Homer  here  spoken  of  by 
Lesches  is  the  pseudo-Homer.  And  either 
he  or  the  true  Homer  anyhow  must  have 
written  the  hymn.  But  we  shall  see,  in 
the  course  of  the  next  chapter  but  one, 
that  he  could  not  have  written  it,  therefore 
the  true  Homer  must  have  done  so. 

But  I  reofret  to  see  that  the  ^[ifted  and 
venerable  author  of  **  Homeric  Synchro- 
nisms "t  complains  that  "the  composer  of 
the  hymn  has  no  rule  or  arrangement." 
But  is  this  so  ?  Most  emphatically  it  is 
not  so,  but  the  very  contrary.  See  here 
is  the  map  of  the  yEgean  and  the  cities, 
and  islands  in  it,  between  Athens  and 
Crete,  beloved  by  Apollo. 

*  Westermann's  "  Lives,"  p.  44. 
t  Pages  loi,  102. 


The  Co77tplete  Life  of  Homer.    299 

Homeric  Map  of  the  IslaxNds,  Cities,  and  Mountains 

CONSPICUOUS    FOR    THE     CULT    OF    APOLLO,    THE    GOD 

OF  Song,  and  Wine,  and  Music,  and  given  over 
TO  HIS  Worship. 


Mt.  Athos. 

Samothrace. 
Mt.  Tmolus. 

Lcmnos. 

Tf'oy, 

Peparethus. 

Lesbos. 

Peiresiae. 
^gce.    [Scyros]. 
Eubcea. 

Athens. 

Scyros  nova. 
Cuma,    Phocoea. 
Chios.  Erythrae.  Smyrna. 
Corycus.                   Colophon. 

Claros. 

Sgina. 

Delos. 
Rhencea. 

Ephesus. 
Samos. 
Miletus. 

Naxos. 

Paros. 

los. 

Cos. 

Cnidus. 

Rhodes. 

Carpathus. 

Crete. 


♦  ♦  1) 


,     Places  conspicuous  by  their  absence  are  printed  \xi italics. 


300     The  Complete  Life  oj  Homer. 

Amongst  them  are  to  be  seen  neither 

Rhodes  nor  Colophon,  for  he  was  born  at 

neither  of  those  places,  and  he  hated  the 

latter  not  only  as  being   Amazonian  and 

the  cause  of  his  banishment,  but  also  as 

having  blasphemed  the  God  of  Song  in 

his  person   during  his  recent  stay  there. 

Still  less  do  we" see  Cyme  and  Smyrna, 

for  they  had  rejected  the  God's  high-priest 

the  poet,  that,  as  he  had  been  born  within 

the    radius    of    his   especial    presence    at 

•Claros,  so  was  destined  to  die  within  the 

radius  of  his  especial  presence  at  Delos. 

Neither,  lastly,  do  we  see  los,  for  neither 

was  his  mother  from  that  place,  nor  could 

he  foreknow  that  he  should  die  there  ;  nor 

Troy,  where  the  lot  of  the  schoolmaster 

amongst  its  handsome  but  wanton  and  idle 

urchins  was  a  dreary  one. 

Now,  excluding  that  one  line  about 
Scyros,  where  is  the  want  of  **  topical 
continuity  "  .'^     If  we  only  transpose — 

'*  S/cupoc  (cat  <^w«:om  c«t  Akpoka»»;c  opoc  atTri;  ' — 

"  Scyros  and  Phoc?ea  and  the  lofty  mountain 
of  Acrocane  " — 

from  the  sixth  line  to  the  ninth  of  the  list, 
the  order  is  so  absolutely  unexceptionable 


The  Complete  Life  of  Llomer.    301 

that  one  could  fancy  the  poet  had  a 
**  Bradshaw  "  or  an  **  A  B  C  "  on  the  table 
before  him  in  writing  his  hymn.  Obvi- 
ously, however,  the  Scyros  here  mentioned 
is  not  the  Scyros  in  which  Theseus,  the 
especial  hero  of  Athens,  was  treacherously 
murdered,  and  in  which  Neoptolemus,, 
the  ruffianly  butcher  of  our  poet's  infant 
Astyanax,  was  born.  That  Scyros  was 
exactly  the  one  place  on  the  face  of  the 
earth  that  our  poet  would  most  studiously 
avoid  mentioning.  And,  besides,  it  has 
no  connection  either  with  him  or  with 
Apollo,  and  was  wholly  out  of  his  route. 
The  Scyros  here  referred  to  is,  of  course, 
the  Scyros  of  which  our  poet  wrote  : — 

**  Achilles  slept  in  the  corner  of  the  tent, 
And  by  his  side  fair-cheek'd  Diomede, 
Whom  he  from  Lesbos  carried,  Phorbas'  daughter  ; 
And  on  the  other  side  Patroclus  lay, 
And  by  him  Iphis,  great  Achilles'  gift, 
When  he  won  lofty  Scyros  from  Enyeus." 


Doubtless  hither  went  the  children  of 
Achilles  by  Diomede  and  of  Patroclus  by 
Iphis,  and  other  Asiatic  Thessalians,  and 
named  it,  just  as  they  named  Larissa, 
Magnesia,  Cumae,  Arne,  and  Erythrce  from 


302     The  Complete  Life  of  Homer, 

the  Greek  towns  of  the  same  name.  And 
in  all  probability  it  was  their  descendants 
that  subsequently  colonised  Cyme  and 
Smyrna.  Well,  then,  may  Scyros  have 
been  sacred  to  Apollo  in  our  poet's  eyes. 

And  this  is  a  further  proof  that  the 
Scyros  of  the  hymn  is  not  the  Scyros  of 
King  Lycomedes.  Homer  (the  pseudo- 
Homer,  of  course),  is  said  to  have  died  at 
Scyros.  Now,  nothing  more  natural  than 
that  he  should  die  at  the  lofty  Scyros  of 
Enyeus,  in  the  course  of  his  Phil-Homeric 
pilgrimages  between  Troy  and  Chios.  But 
what  should  bring  him  to  such  an  out-of- 
the-way  island  as  Scyros  } 


* 
* 


* 


But  why  should  ^gce  be  especially 
sacred  to  Apollo,  even  though  it  did  give 
name  to  the  ^gean  Sea  ?  Permit  me  to 
answer  this  question  by  another.  Why, 
on  the  festive  day  of  Neptune,  do  the  poet 
Horace  and  his  Lyde  sing  alternately  in 
honour,   the    one    of    Neptune    and  the 


T/ie  Complete  Life  of  Homer,    303 

Nereids,  and  the  other  of  Latona  and 
Diana  .^  Next  to  the  mother  that  bore 
him,  at  Delos,  the  god  to  whom  that 
island  belonged  obviously  deserved  com- 
memoration in  an  ode  to  Delian  Apollo. 
Next,  therefore,  only  to  Delos  should 
yEgai  be  sacred,  not  so  much  because  it 
gave  name  to  the  ^gean  as  because  there 
was  Neptune's  '' glorious  home,  golden, 
shining,  and  imperishable." 

One  last  question  that  greatly  vexed 
antiquity.  Which  was  written  first, — the 
"Iliad"  or  the  "Odyssey".?  Lucian 
says,  in  ''  The  True  Story,"  that  Homer 
told  him  he  wrote  the  ''  Iliad"  first.  That 
is,  we  learn  that  fact  by  the  perusal  of  his 
writings.  And  so  we  do.  The  mental 
and  physical  decline  and  exhaustion  of  the 
septuagenarian  bard  are  most  palpable  in 
the  latter  books  of  the  "  Odyssey."  I 
cannot,  however,  see  that  there  is  greater 
unity  of  design  in  the  "  Odyssey  "  than 
in  the  "  Iliad."  A  mere  general  reader 
sees  no  lack  of  the  said  unity  in  the 
"Iliad,"  whereas  in  the  "Odyssey"  he 
cannot  help  being  struck  with  the  double 
prooemium  (that  in  Book  I.  and  that  in 
Book  V.)  and  the  double  Nekuia  (that  in 


J 


04     The  Complete  Life  of  Homer. 


Book  XI.  and  that  in  Book  XXIV.).     I 
am,  therefore,  led  strongly  to  believe  that 
the  first  four  books- after   Book   I.,  i-79r 
formed    originally   no  part  of  it,   nor  the 
first  27  lines  of  Book  V.,  nor  much,  if  any, 
after    Book  XII.      My  reasons   are— (i) 
Those  already  alleged  actually  conclusive 
as  regards  Books  I. -IV.     (2)  The  extreme 
inferiority  of  Books  I. -IV.  after  the  first 
hundred  lines  or  so  and  of  Books  XIV.- 
XXIII.     (3)  The    sudden    flash    of    fine 
poetry  in  the  second  Nekuia,  and  **0d." 
1. 32-43.  which  are  fragments  of  the  Nostoi. 
(4)  The  extremely  autobiographical  cha- 
racter of  Books  XIII.-XVIII.     Till  then 
Homer  speaks  of  himself  very  furtively, 
but  now  his  mask  is  almost  off,   his  drift 
almost  undisguised.     And  my  conclusions 
are  as  follows  : — 

**  Ye  all  are  right  and  all  are  wrong," 

as  the  chameleon  says  in  the  fable. 
Homerwrote  "Od."  1. 1-79,  and  from  *'Od." 
V.  28,  to  ''Od."  XII.  before  the/'  Iliad," 
and  the  rest  afterwards.  His  audience  got 
weary  of  the  garrulous  egotism,  as  they 
profanely  deemed  it,  of  his  decline  ;  and,  in 
spite  of  splendid  efforts  in  Books  XIX., 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer, 


jOi 


XXI.,  XXIII.,  and  XXIV.,  he  found 
himself  compelled  to  leave  Chios  by  the 
forbidding  spectre  of  an  empty  lecture- 
room.  Indeed,  so  obvious  is  that  decline 
that  sixteen  out  of  the  twenty-four  Books 
of  the  "  Odyssey  "  are  little  short  of  proof 
positive  that  Homerwrote.  Even  to  us 
moderns  they  are  much  less  interestino- 
than  his  former  poems;  to  his  contem- 
poraries they  must  have  been  immeasur- 
ably so.  The  demand  for  them,  therefore, 
must  have  been  so  limited  that  they  must 
necessarily  have  perished  if  not  written. 
They  must  always,  of  course,  have  pleased 
in  the  study ;  but  for  recitation  in  those 
rude  times  they  must  surely  have  been 
less,  much  less,  attractive  than  others  of 
his  poems,  of  w^hich  not  a  line  is  left,  e.g., 
the  ••  Aix"  and  the  *' Amphiaraus,"  or  but 
a  few  disputed  lines,  c.g,,  the  ''  Cypria," 
the  "  Ilias  Mikra,"  and  the  *'  Nostoi." 

So  much  for  his  writings.  Next,  briefly, 
for  the  editions  and  translations  thereof.  ' 

Zenodotus  brought  out  the  first  anno- 
tated edition,  280  B.C.  Aristophanes  of 
Byzantium  first  devised  the  present  sys- 
tem of  accentuation,  200  B.C. 

Aristarchus   divided   the    ''  Iliad "    into 

x 


3o6    The  Complete  Life  of  Homer, 

24,  and  the  **  Odyssey"  into   24  books,* 

156  15.C. 

The  oldest  MS.  (an  Egyptian  papyrus), 
containing  a  certain  portion  of  Homer, 
was  written  about  the  same  time. 

The  oldest  MS.  of  the  -Iliad"  (Vcnetus 
A.)  was  written  in  the  14th  century. 

The  works  of  Homer  were  first  printed 
at  Florence,  14S8  a.d.,  that  is  to  say,  just 
four  centuries  ago.  This  was  the  first 
book  ever  printed,  except  one  psalm,  and, 
strange  to  say,  the  ''Batrachomyomachia." 

The  best  English  translation  of  both 
*'  Iliad  "  and  *'  Odyssey,"  in  verse, are  those 
of  Chapman,  Pope,  and  Cowper  ;  in  prose, 
that  in  Bohn  s  "  Classical  Library"  :  of  the 
*^  Iliad"  only,  those  of  Derby  and  Long- 
fellow in  verse,  and  Lang  and  others  in 
prose  ;  of  the  *' Odyssey,"  those  of  Worsley 
in  verse,  and  Butcher  in  prose. 

The  Cyclic  poets  are  Arctinus,  Lesches, 
Agias,  and  Eugammon.  It  is  not  quite 
certain  whether  they  wrote,  Arctinus  the 
**^thiopis,"  Lesches  the  ''IliasParva,"  and 
Agias  the  ''Nostoi,"on  the  basisof  Homer  s 
works  on  those  subjects,  or  not.  But, 
anyhow,  their  writing  on  those  subjects  is 

♦  Plutarch. 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer,    307 

no  proof  that  he  did  not  write  on  them. 
It  only  proves  that  his  previous  works  had 
perished.  These  lasted  till  the  time  of 
Pausanias.  Ultimately,  however,  they  too 
disappeared,  and  were  replaced  by  the 
works,  in  Latin  prose,  of  Septimius  and 
Probus,  and  in  Greek  verse  of  Coluthus, 
Tryphiodorus,  and  Alcibiades  of  Smyrna, 
commonly  known  as  Ouintus  Smyrn^us. 

Homer  is  probably  the  very  first  writer 
that  enjoyed  the  distinction  of  being  trans- 
lated from  one  language  into  another.  In 
consequence  of  the  conquests  of  Alexander 
the  Great,  his  works  were  translated,  as 
i^lian  informs  us,  into  all  the  Oriental 
languages. 

Livius  Andronicus  wrote  an  *'Odyssey," 
supposed  to  be  a  free  translation  of 
Homer's,  in  the  third  century  before 
Christ. 

Homer  has  been  translated  into  almost 
all  the  modern  European  languages.  The 
best  translation  is  in  German,  by  Voss. 

The  most  valuable  scholia  to  the  *' Iliad" 
were  edited  by  Bekker,  Berlin,  1825,  in  two 
vols.  4to.  The  most  valuable  scholia  to  the 
**  Odyssey"  were  published  by  Buttmann, 
Berlin,  1821.  ^ 

X  2 


o 


08     77/^  Complete  Life  of  Homer. 


The  most  celebrated  commentary  ever 
written  on  any  author  is  that  by  Eusta- 
thius  on  Homer,  in  two  huge  folio  volumes. 

The  best  edition  of  the  *' Iliad"  is  by 
Heyne  ;  the  best  of  the  "  Odyssey  "  is  by 

Nitzch.  ^  IV    1  M 

The  best  English  edition  of  the  ''  Iliad 
is  Paley's;  of  the  '^Odyssey,"  Haysman's. 

Buttmanns  '^  Lexilogus,"  and  Damm's 
**  Lexicon  Homericum,"  are  the  best  Ho- 
meric word-books;  the  latter  as  being 
written  in  the  last  century  of  the  positive, 
the  former  as  being  written  in  the  present 
century  of  the  negative  school. 

Homer  shares  with  the  Bible,  Shake- 
speare, Milton,  and  Tennyson,  the  highest 
of  all  possible  literary  honours,— a  Con- 
cordance. C      J] 

The  only  complete  translation  ol  all 
his  works— the  Iliad,  the  Odyssey,  the 
Hymns,  Epigrams,  and  Batrachomyo- 
machia,— is  that  in  Bohn's  Library,  and 
even  this  does  not  contain  the  Fragments. 


CHAPTER   VIII 


DID    HE    WRITE  .'' 

And  now  we  come  to  the  great  question 
of  questions.  '*  Did  Homer  write  ?" 

We  have  a  thousand  reasons  for  think- 
ing he  did.  All  antiquity  believed  in  the 
primeval  discovery  of  writing.  It  was 
theopneustos,  Adam  scrawled  love-songs 
to  Eve  on  the  fig-leaves  he  afterwards 
made  breeches  of.  Jove  himself  wrote  oa 
sheepskins.  From  his  brain  sprang,  long 
before  Cecrops,  the  bottled  wisdom  (Metis) 
of  literature,  the  "  dear  child  "  of  his  weary 
travels  over  the  then  known  world. 
Tritogeneia  was  seen  on  the  banks  of 
Lake  Tritonis,  1796  B.C.,  in  the  reign  of 
Ogyges,  i,  e,,  writing  was  discovered  in 
Egypt  about  that  time.  Hephaestus  begot 
Apollo  upon  Minerva — that  is,  great  deeds 


3IO     The  Co77iplete  Life  of  Homer, 

were  immortalised  on  brass  at  the  birth 
of  the  Higher  Speech.  It  is  an  idea  of 
which  all  Ancient  Theogony  is  eloquent. 
Jupiter,  that  is,  the  Higher  Speech,  bound 
his  father  Saturn,  /.  e..  Time,  in  chains. 
And  when  we  are  told  that  Rhea  gave 
Saturn  a  stone  to  eat,  it  means  that  the 
record  of  great  deeds  was  carved  on  stone. 
Even  as  Shakespeare  has  it — ■ 

*^  If  I  could  find  example 
Of  thousands  that  had  struck  anointed  kings, 
And  flourish'd  after,  I'd  not  do  't  :  but  since 
Nor  brass,  nor  stone,  nor  parchment  bears  not  one, 
Let  villany  itself  forswear  't." 

^'  Moyses  primus  Hebrceas  exaravit  litteras 
Abraham  Syras  et  olim  protulit  Chaldaicas 
Isis  arte  non  minore  condidit  /Egyptias."  * 

Abraham  wrote  I  know  not  what,  but 
presume  **  My  Calling  and  my  Covenant," 
which  the  venerable  author  of  the  Penta- 
teuch doubtless  made  use  of  in 

his    "Genesis" 1921  B.C. 

Isis  published,  after  her  hus- 
band's death,  "  Travels  and 
Adventures  in  the  Mulberry 
Leaf"     1528  B.C. 


*  Anthologia  Latina. 


T/ie  Coup  let  e  Life  of  Homer.    311 

Moses  wrote  his '' Laws  " 1491  b.c. 

„  '"Pentateuch"...    145 1  b.c. 

When  Adam  was  now  a  comparatively 
young  man  of  only  230  years  of  age,  Seth 
invented  Hebrew  letters,  and,  with  their 
help  (for  otherwise  he  could  not),  *'The 
Wisdom  of  the  Egyptians,  and  the  Signs 
of  the  Zodiac,  emd  the  revolutions  of  the 
heavenly  bodies,  the  sun,  the  moon,  and 
the  five  planets,  and  the  Septentrions. 
And  to  the  planets,  also,  he  gave  their 
present  names,  Saturn,  Jupiter,  &c."* 

So  says  the  venerable  John  Malala  of 
Antioch.  And  the  Chaldaeans,  also,  from 
times  indefinitely  remote,  assert  that  writ- 
ing was  discovered  before  the  First  Flood, 
viz.,  that  of  Noah,  or  Xisuthrus,  for  which 
Usher  and  the  Vulgate  give  the  date 
2348  B.C.,  but  the  immeasurably  higher 
authority  of  the  Septuagint  gives  the 
much  earlier  date  of  3246  B.C.  *' And 
Old  Father  Time  (Kronos)  warned  King 
Xisuthrus  to  put  his  books  away  in  a  safe 
place  before  the  rain  came  down  and  spoilt 
them."*  Of  course  this  means  the  study 
of  the  heavenly    bodies,  the  principal  of 


*  Malala, 


12     The  Complete  Life  of  Homer. 


whom  his  orreat  ancestor  had  named 
Saturnus,  which,  I  presume,  is  Sethese  for 
Time,  and  the  next  Zeus,  Sethese  for  the 
art  of  writing,  by  which  the  dull,  leaden 
tyranny  of  Time  is  dethroned.  And  this 
is  the  meaning  of  the  strange  saying 
among  the  Greeks,  above  referred  to, — • 
"Jove  wrote  on  sheepskins."  Of  courser 
the  reader  will  understand  that  this  is  the 
Chaldc^an  way  of  putting  the  thing.  Ac- 
cording to  them,  Noah  foresaw  the  flood  by 
study  of  the  stars  under  divine  inspiration. 
And  obviously  any  celestial  observations 
worthy  of  the  name  were  clean  impossible 
without  writing.  Obviously  the  greater 
involves  the  less.  And  the  poet  distincdy 
informs  us  that  the  first  astronomers  wrote 

"  They  first  with  figured  charts  mappt  out 
the  pole." 

But,  to  say  nothing  of  the  star-gazing, 
sky-supporting  house  of  Atlas,  celestial 
observations  were  taken  as  early  as  2234 
B.C.  There  must,  therefore,  have  been 
writing  long  before  then — if  we  credit  the 
fairly  harmonious    account   of  the    Chal- 


T/ie  Complete  Life  of  Homer,    31 


•d:eansand  ofMalala,  long  before  the  flood. 
Even  if  Adam  did  not  write  love-songs  to 
Eve  on  the  fig-leaves  that  were  afterwards 
the  outward  and  visible  sign  of  his  shame- 
ful fall  from  innocence,    yet  did  Seth,  ac- 
cording  to    Malala,    invent  writing   some 
3600   B.C.,   according   to  our   date  ;  some 
3500  before  Homer,  according  to  the  date 
of  the  Septuagint.      All  this    may  seem, 
at  first  sight,  mere  trifling,  but  indeed  it  is 
a  primary  object  with  me  to  show,  wholly 
irrespective  of  the   truth  of  this  or  that 
world-old  legend,  that  mankind  have  in  all 
ages  been  pervaded  with  a  strong  instinc- 
tive conviction  of  the  extreme  antiquity  of 
writing  ;  that  just  as  man,  as  he  develops 
from  the  brute,  requires  speech,  so,  as  he 
develops   from    the    savage,    he    requires 
writing.     And   it   is  an  objection  beyond 
all  words  grovellingly  contemptible  to  urge 
that  the  proof  is   undocumentary.      The 
name  of  God  is  not  written  in  yonder  sky, 
yet,    nevertheless,    absolute    Atheists    are 
few.    The  letters  of  no  alphabet  are  written 
on  the  brain,  as  "  ai  "  w^as  fabled  by  the 
poets  to  be  written   on  the  hyacinth,  yet 
the  innate  love  of  knowledge,  and  the  lofty 
aspirations  of  the  super-animal  instinct  of 


312     The  Complete  Life  of  Homer. 

whom  his  orreat  ancestor  had  named 
Saturnus,  which,  I  presume,  is  Sethese  for 
Time,  and  the  next  Zeus,  Sethese  for  the 
art  of  writing",  by  which  the  dull,  leaden 
tyranny  of  Time  is  dethroned.  And  this 
is  the  meaning  of  the  strange  saying 
among  the  Greeks,  above  referred  to, — 
''Jove  wrote  on  sheepskins."  Of  course 
the  reader  will  understand  that  this  is  the 
Chaldc^an  way  of  putting  the  thing.  Ac- 
cording to  them,  Noah  foresaw  the  flood  by 
study  of  the  stars  under  divine  inspiration. 
And  obviously  any  celestial  observations 
worthy  of  the  name  were  clean  impossible 
without  writing.  Obviously  the  greater 
involves  the  less.  And  the  poet  distinctly 
informs  us  that  the  first  astronomers  wrote 


*'  llowrot  Cf  yocifi fiiim  ttoXov  ttt/££r()?;<rf(iTo. 

"  They  first  with  figured  charts  mappt  out 
the  pole." 

But.  to  say  nothing  of  the  star-gazing, 
sky-supporting  house  of  Atlas,  celestial 
observations  w^ere  taken  as  early  as  2234 
B.C.  There  must,  therefore,  have  been 
writing  long  before  then — if  we  credit  the 
fairly  harmonious    acccvunt   of  the    Chal- 


T/ie  Co7nplete  Life  of  Homer.    313 

•dceansand  ofMalala,  long  before  the  flood. 
Even  if  Adam  did  not  write  love-songs  to 
Eve  on  the  fig-leaves  that  were  afterwards 
the  outward  and  visible  sign  of  his  shame- 
ful fall  from  innocence,    yet  did  Seth,  ac- 
cording  to   Malala,    invent  writing   some 
3600   B.C.,   according    to  our   date  ;  some 
3500  before  Homer,  according  to  the  date 
of  the  Septuagint.      All  this    may  seem, 
at  first  sight,  mere  trifling,  but  indeed  it  is 
a  primary  object  with  me  to  show,  wholly 
irrespective  of  the   truth  of  this  or  that 
world-old  legend,  that  mankind  have  in  all 
ages  been  pervaded  with  a  strong  instinc- 
tive conviction  of  the  extreme  antiquity  of 
writing ;  that  just  as  man,  as  he  develops 
from  the  brute,  requires  speech,  so,  as  he 
develops   from    the    savage,    he   requires 
writing.     And   it   is  an  objection  beyond 
all  words  grovellingly  contemptible  to  urge 
that  the  proof  is   undocumentary.      The 
name  of  God  is  not  written  in  yonder  sky, 
yet,    nevertheless,    absolute    Atheists    are 
few.    The  letters  of  no  alphabet  are  written 
on  the  brain,  as  ''  ai  "  was  fabled  by  the 
poets  to  be  written   on  the  hyacinth,  yet 
the  innate  love  of  knowledge,  and  the  lofty 
aspirations  of  the  super-animal  instinct  of 


314     The  Complete  Life  of  Homer, 

reason,  convinced  the  reverent  heathen 
that  the  same  divine  faculty  that  inspired 
the  lower,  inspired  also  the  higher  speech, 
and  secured  him  from  the  hideous  blank 
of  modern  hyperscepticism.  Surely,  as 
compared  with  his  noble  humility,  our 
learned  pride  seems  to  retrograde  to  the 
condition  of  our  primeval  ancestors,  and  to 
go  on  all  fours. 

Writing,  then,  was  first  discovered  by 
Seth,  3500  years  before  Homer.  Xisu- 
thrus  stored  his  library  in  the  Ark  3246 
B.C.  The  Chalda::ans  took  celestial  calcu- 
lations (involving  elaborate  use  of  writing, 
as  I  have  already  observed)  2234  B.C. 
Abraham  introduced  the  Chaldaic  cha- 
racter into  Palestine  1921  B.C.  Writing 
was  discovered  in  Libye  (or  Cyrenaice  or 
Egypt,  it  is  not  quite  clear  which)  in  the 
days  of  Ogyges,  as  appears  from  the 
legend  of  the  birth  of  Tritogeneia,  some 
time  previous  to  the  flood  of  Ogyges, 
1764  B.C. 

Hermes  Trismegistus,  the  Egyptian,  is 
said  to  have  first  re-invented  letters  in  the 
time  of  Osiris.  But,  long  before  his  time, 
Athotis,  in  the  Second  Egyptian  Dynasty, 
wrote  a  book  on  Dissection.     Hermippus 


The  Complete  Life  of  ILomer,    315 

expounded  2,000  verses  composed  by 
Zoroaster  in  the  time  of  Semiramis.* 
The  Canaanites,  flying,  as  they  alleged, 
before  the  hideously-grinding  oppression  of 
Joseph,  during  the  seven  years  of  famine, 
about  1702  B.C.,  carved  this  inscription: 
"We  are  banisht  from  our  paternal 
acres  by  Joseph  the  Bandit."t 

And  now  Tritogeneia,  who  had  long 
been  worshipped  in  Egypt  under  the 
name  of  Sais,  at  a  town  so  named,  at  last 
came  to  Greece  with  Cecrops,  and  chose 
Athens  for  her  own  especial  city.  But 
she  would  be  a  virgin,  and  Vulcan  claimed 
her  promised  hand  in  vain  ;  that  is,  the 
higher  speech  was  free  and  unfettered. 
Written  in  wax  one  day,  it  was  blotted 
out  the  next  with  the  transverse  pen, — the 
pen  of  iron,  with  which  Vulcan  had  brought 
her  into  the  world.  But  now  he  wished 
to  wed  her  to  imperishable  monuments  of 
brass,  but  her  time  was  not  yet  come. 
The  brazen  records  were  hidden  for  a 
thousand  years  under  ground,  till  the  time 
of  the  father  of  Acusilaus. 


*  Pliny,  "  N.  H.,"  xxx.  2. 

t  iMiiller,     "  Fragmenta    Groecx    Historioe," 
''  Manetho." 


art. 


3i6     The  Complete  Life  of  Homer, 

The  year  before  the  flood  of  Deucalion, 
1503    B.C.,     died     Phaethon,     Prince     of 
Abyssinia.     He   studied   astronomy   with 
so  much  ardour  that  he  was  said  to  have 
been  the    son   of    Helios,    and    to   have 
borrowed    his    chariot    for    a    day.       He 
wrote  three  books   on    Solar  Geography, 
in  which  he  possibly  discussed  the  causes 
of  the  abnormal  heat  of  the  year  in  which 
he  died,  and  prognosticated  therefrom  the 
flood   which    followed    it    in    the   ensuing 
year.      His  three  books,  entitled    "  Heli- 
ades,"  each  with  a  distinct  Hehac  tide,— 
(i)   ''Aigle,"(2)   -  Lampetie,"  (3)  '' Phae- 
thusa,"— written  under  the  pleasant  shade 
of      some       Ethiopian      river,     absurdly 
mistaken    for    the    Po,  appear    to    have 
perished    with     him.      Query,    however, 
may  not  the  work  have   terminated  with 
a  description  of  the  Po,  and  the  amber- 
dropping  poplars   on    its   banks,  and  the 
mournful   melody  of  the  swans?      From 
Gondar  to  Milan  may  well  have  been  as 
much  of  the  world  as  was  then  known  ;  to 
Calpe  doubdess  was;    and  he  may  have 
meant  to  add  one  more  book,  but  left  the 
work    incomplete    owing    to   his    sudden 
death  by  sunstroke. 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer.    317 

King  Armais  wrote  his  travels  and 
adventures;  and  lo,  his  queen,  afterwards 
deified  as  I  sis,  in  honour  of  whom  the 
first  letter  in  the  alphabet  was  called  "  Ox's 
head  "  by  the  Phoenicians,*  published  them 
after  his  death,  no  doubt  with  the  figure 
of  an  ox's  head  on  the  title-page,  and  the 
first  letter  of  the  first  word,  "  Amun,"  in- 
geniously distorted,  modern  story-book 
fashion,  into  the  form  of  an  ox's  head, 
some  thirteen  generations,  or  about  450 
years,  before  Homer;  or,  as  Ovid  prettily 
puts  it,  lo  made  her  father  acquainted 
with  her  calamity  by  writing  her  name 
upon  the  sand  with  her  hoof;  i.e.,  she 
sent  him  a  copy  of  the  work  with  her 
name  on  the  fly-leaf.  Cecrops  Diphyes 
introduced  the  new  discovery  into  Attica, 
1556  B.C.  From  Agenor,  the  great  grand- 
son of  lo,  the  Phoenicians  received  the 
great  gift  of  the  higher  speech,  and  called 
the  letters  "  Phoinikika,"  from  his  son 
Phoenix,  and  the  tree  that  supplied  the 
leaves  for  writing,  ''  Phoenix."  That  leaves 
were  anciently  used  for  writing  we  know 
(i)  from  this;  (2)  from  Virgil's    ''Sibyl-'; 

*  Bachman's  **  Anecdota,"  vol.  i.  p.  73. 


3i8    The  Complete  Life  of  Homer. 

(3)  from  the  ekphullophoria  (banishment), 
and  petaHsmos  (voting)  by  leaves  of  the 
Syracusans ;  (4)  from  all  that  we  know 
concerning  Dares  Phrygius ;  (5)  from  the 
usage  of  the  word  "leaf"  in  all  languages. 
A  creneration  later,  Cadmus,  the  son  of 
Aeenor,  and  his  cousin  Danaus,  the  son 
of  Belus,  introduced  the  invention  of  Seth 
into  Boeotia  and  the  Peloponnese  respec- 
tively ;  the  first  1493  B.C.,  and  the  second  a 
little  later.  Cadmus  erected,  we  are  told, 
a  statue  of  Minerva  at  Thebes,  with  the 
inscription,  *'  ONGA,"  her  name  amongst 
the  Phoenicians ;  and  about  the  same  time 
Moses,  ''trained  in  all  the  learning  of  the 
Egyptians,"  wrote  his  "  Pentateuch."  But 
even  before  the  introduction  of  the 
Kadmika  or  Phoinikika  grammata,  we 
read  that  scarcely  had  the  flood  (of 
Ogyges)  subsided  when  the  Pelasgi  began 
to  scribble  in  the  rude  aboriginal  character 
which,  in  opposition  to  the  new  and 
improved  method,  went  by  the  name  of 
Pelasgika  grammata.  The  Pelasgica  gram- 
mata bore  much  the  same  relation  to  the 
Kadmika  grammata  as  the  Runic  arrow- 
heads do  to  the  black  letter.  Buried 
with   the  shapeless  Runic,  the  cuneiform 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer.    319 

Assyrian,  and  the  Egyptian  hieroglyphic 
in  the  excavated  debris  of  remote  an- 
tiquity, they  still  excite  the  curiosity  of 
the  learned.  But  they  disappeared  early 
from  the  face  of  the  earth  before  the 
Cadmic  as  did  the  Runic  before  the 
Saxon. 

But  even  if  we  put  them  entirely  aside, 
yet  from  sources  entirely  different  we 
know  that  there  were  letters  in  Greece 
long  before  Cadmus.  Even  as  Philo- 
stratus  says  in  his  "  Heroica,"  and  Tzetzes 
in  his  '' Chiliades  "  :  —  ''Letters  were 
before  Cadmus,  as  appears  from  the 
oracle  "  : — 

**Come,  listen  unto  my  word,  oh  Cadmus,  son  of 
Agenor,"  (Sec. 

And  the  Danaides  inscribed  under  the 
lion  of  brass  that  guarded  one  of  their 
wells : — 

"  The  Gods  made  Argos  ill  water'd, 
But  the  Danaides  have  made  it  well  water'd."  * 

Which  blasphemy  brought  on  them  the 
certainly  not  inappropriate  punishment  of 
drawing  water  for  ever  in  Hell  in  sieves. 

*  Hesiod's  "  Fragments." 


J 


20     The  Complete  Life  of  Homer, 


Long  before  Trophonius  built  the 
magnificent  temple  of  stone  at  Delphi, 
1263  li.c, — long  even  before  the  days 
"when  all  was  of  copper,  and  there  was 
no  iron,"  and  Trophonius  built  Erech- 
theus  his  Apollo's  celebrated  first  temple 
of  copper, — in  the  golden  age,  wdien  the 
gods  conversed  with  man  as  with  a  friend, 
in  temples  roofed  with  turf, — in  times  the 
most  fabulously  remote,  oracles  w^ere 
believed  to  have  descended  from  Heaven, 
and  to  have  been  read  by  the  eye  of  man. 

ButPhcemonoe  was, as  Pausanias  informs 
us,  the  first  Delphic  priestess.  And  she 
was  the  first  that  delivered  the  oracles  in 
hexameters;  and  her  "Doves"  were  the 
first  collection  of  oracles.*  With  her  the 
MS.  file  of  oracles  at  the  Shrine  of 
Loxias,  of  which  Euripides  speaks,  t 
doubtless  commenced.  She  lived  two  gene- 
rations before  Acrisius.  %  That  is  to  say, 
in  the  times  of  the  Danaida:.  If,  then, 
writing  was  known  almost  from  the  be- 
ginning of  the  world,  and  had  now  been 

*  Paus.,  X.  5,  §  4,  12,  §  5. 

-|-  Pleisthenes,    Fragni.     Inedit.,    -oW'tern    -noWa 

X  Schol.  Eurip.  Orest.,  1,094. 


T/ie  Complete  Life  of  LLomcr. 


,21 


introduced  into  every  part  of  Greece,— ac- 
cording to  some  nearly  four  and  at  the  very 
least  two  entire  centuries,— how  is  itpossible 
even  to  imagine  that  the  greatest  of  poets 
and  the  most  gifted  of  mankind  should  be 
Ignorant  of  it  ?     An  angel-gorilla  were  an 
enormity  in  the  origin  of  species  only  two 
steps  more    monstrous.      Immediately  on 
emerging    from    savagery,    man,    looking 
upwards,   invented  the  higher  or  mental 
speech.     All  antiquity   attests  this  acrain 
and    again.     And   if  the    Pelasgic   demi- 
savage  scribbled  his  barbarous  runes  ere 
the  earth  was  yet  dry  after  the  Flood,  be 
sure  that  Apollo's  darling  of  darlings  was 
no  **mute  inglorious  Milton  "—mute,  we 
mean,  as    regards  the  higher    or  mental 
speech. 

But  even  dismissing  all  primeval  legends, 
and  confining  ourselves  to  the  broad  out- 
linesof  universally-admitted  facts,  Orpheus, 
Olen,  and  Linus  sang  ;  Endymion,* 
Phaethon,  and  Adas  studied  astronomy; 
Cecrops  Diphyes,  Cadmus,  and  Danaus 
(with  whom  the  fascinating  dawn  of 
Hellenic  history  commences)  introduced 
the  great  invention  of  mental  speech  into 
the    native   lands    that    they  respectively 


22     TJic  Complete  Life  of  Homer. 


adopted ;  Minos,  ^acus,  and  Rhadaman- 
thus    made   laws;    navies   sprang   up    in 
every  port ;  J  ason  went  with  the  flower  of 
Greece  on  a  great  exploring  expedition  in 
quest  of  the  precious  metals  round  the  then 
known  world  ;  Daedalus,   Palamedes,  and 
others    invented    all    sorts  of  wonderful 
things;  Bellerophon   brought  a  letter    of 
introduction    to    the    court    of    Jobates ; 
armour  was  carved,   embossed,  and    de- 
signed  in  the    most    marvellous    manner 
centuries  and  centuries  before  the  time  of 
Homer.     Pooh-pooh  all  this  as  you  will, 
but  there  never  was  smoke  without  fire, 
and  so  much  at  least  remains  unquestion- 
able that  there  was  such  a  progress  in  the 
arts  and  sciences  long  before  Homer  as  to 
render  the  discovery  of  writing  in  or  before 
his  time  highly   probable.     The  shield  of 
Hercules,  and  the  armour  of  Achilles,  the 
breastplate   of  Agamemnon,   the  cunning 
embroideries  of  Troy,  of  Athens,  and  of 
Ithaca,  showed  a  vast  advance  in  science 
beyond  mere  writing,  just  as  mezzotinto, 
engraving,  &c.,  do  beyond  mere  printing ; 
and   when   peace  was  fully  restored,  and 
poetry,    to   commemorate   the   great  war 
and  its  colossal  issues,  came  into  request, 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer, 


323 


Homer  was  born  and  the  -  Cycle  "  written. 
A  similar  mode  of  reasoning   applies  to 
the  pictoral  letter  of  Bellerophon.  As  lono- 
as  the    thing  to  be   commemorated   wat 
well  known  to  everybody,  such  pourtrayals 
as  the  Assyrian  sculptures  and  the  Bayeux 
tapestry  were  all   that  could  be  desired  • 
but,  for  secret  despatches  conveyino- infor- 
mation so  surprising  and  instructions  so 
startling,  pictures  would  have  been  utteriy 
unavailing      The  semata  lugra  could  have 
been    nothing    but    cryptographic   hiero- 
g  yphics.     And  given  cryptographic  hiero- 
glyphics m  an  age  and  country   so  bar- 
barous as   that  of  Jobates,  we  may  fairly 
assume  writing  in  the  age  when  Homer 
succeeded  Phemius  in  his  school.     Given 
the  greater,  1250  b.c,  we  may  assume  the 
less,  980  B.C. 

Homer,  in  a  sense,  proves  the  invention 
of  writing,  just  as  Chaucer,  Petrarch,  and 
Boccaccio  prove  that  of  paper,  and  Ariosto, 
lasso,  Shakespeare,  and  Bacon  that  of 
printing.  Great  wars  and  great  social 
commotions,  when  followed  Iby  a  calm 
ever  produce  great  poets  and  historians  • 
instance  Prance,  with  its  Hugos  its 
Thierses,   and   its    Lamartines,    after  the 

V  2 


324    The  Complete  Life  of  Horner. 

Revolution,  and  our  own  wondrous  out- 
burst of  song  under  the  Regency.  And 
great  needs  lead  to  great  inventions,  and 
great  inventions,  such  as  those  of  writing, 
paper,  and  printing,  awake  the  Muses. 

Could    Homer   possibly   have  remem- 
bered his  thirteen  works,   containing    at 
least  a  quarter  of  a  million  lines  that  we 
are   expressly   told   he   wrote,  and    that, 
judging   from    his    obvious    facility,    we 
should  ourselves  have   expected    him  to 
write,  even  if  we  had  not  been  told  so  ; 
or   would   he    have  gone    on  composing, 
stupid,  ostrich-like,  without  remembering  ? 
But    though    the    higher    speech,    the 
speech    of  civilized  man,    wherein   mind 
holds  converse  with  mind  and  soul  with 
soul,  had  now  been  known  in  the  world 
some  three  thousand  years,  and  in  Greece 
some  three  hundred,  the  first  appearance 
of  Greek  literature  was  in  Thrace,  even 
as  Pindar  says  : — 

"  Oh,  Linus,  honour'd  by  the  Gods, 
For  to  thee  first  they  gave  melody."  * 

Though  we  read  of  a  Linus,  that  is,  of  a 
poet,  who  was  the  son  of  one  of  the  Dan- 

*  Find.  ''  Fragm." 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer.     325 

aides  and  of  Hyacinthus,  the  beloved  of 
Apollo,   and  of  Triptolemus,  the  Hesiod 
of    Eleusis,  —  and    though    we    read    of 
Ephialtes  and  Otus,   that  they  first  wor- 
shipped  the   Muses    in    times    the    most 
primeval,   and  of  Pierus,   the  son  of  the 
said   Linus,  that  he  was  their  father,  he 
cultivated    letters   so  diligently,— still  the 
Linus,  the  protomelodist,  brought  letters, 
we  are   told,   first  to  Greece  and  taught 
them   to   Hercules    only  two  generations 
before  the  Trojan  War.     From  this  time 
forth  the  lamp  of  song  was  never  extinct, 
and^  the    evidences  of   the    existence  of 
writing   are   uninterrupted.     Before    this 
there    were    only    the    Oracles,    but    at 
Trezene,    at  the  court  of   Pittheus,— the 
Alfred,  the  David,  the  Weimar,  the  Me- 
cenasof  his  day,— the  lamp  shone  brightest. 
There  Ardalus  invented  the  flute,  whence 
the    Muses   were   called    Ardalides,    and 
there  Pittheus  himself  wrote  the  first  book 
in  Greek  prose.*  A  grammar,  we  are  told, 
but   I  fancy  it  must  have  been  of  a  very 
elementary  kind,  and  little  more,  in  fact, 
than  a  hornbook.     Now  flourished  Olen, 
and  Pamphus,  and  Hyagnis,  and  Olympus  ; 
*  Philostratus  Heroica. 


326     The  Complete  Life  of  Homer. 

and    Thamyris   that  contended  with    the 
Muses  ;  and  Marsyas  that  contended  with 
Apollo   himself  in    song.     But   the   first 
poet,  the  name  or  subject  of  any  of  whose 
works  we  know,  was  Orpheus.    He  wrote, 
we  are  told,  *'The  Bell."  And  there  is  every 
reason  to  believe  that  the  story  of  his  "  De- 
scent into  Hell"  was  nothingbut  a  "Dream" 
of  his,  and  that  the  story  of  the  beautiful 
Narcissus  comes  from  him,  that  he  sang 
verses  to  his  praise,  and  is  the  mock  angry 
lover  in  Ovid  that  invokes  the  vengeance  of 
Rhamnusia  upon  the  too  beautiful  scion  of 
the  House  of  Minos.     After  Orpheus,  the 
names  of  the  writers  before  Homer,  both 
in   verse   and    prose,    is    legion,      ^lian 
names  Oreibantius  of  Trezene,  Melisander 
of  Miletus,  and  Dares,  the  Phrygian  priest 
of  the  temple  of  Vulcan  at  Troy,  whose 
poem  was  in  existence  even  as  late  as  his 
time,  though  only  a  prose  abstract  now 
survives  of  it.*     Of  him  Isidore  writes  : — 
*'  Dares    Phrygius,    first    among    profane 
authors,  wrote  a  history  of  the  Greeks  and 
Trojans,  which  they  say  he  compiled  upon 
the  leaves  of  palms."     And  Ptolemy  also 
tells  us  that  the  '*  Iliad  "  of  Dares  preceded 

♦  V.H.,  lib.  ii.  cap.  ii. 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer.     327 

that  of   Homer.     Besides   these,  we   are 
told  of  Demodocus  the  Spartan,  Phemius 
of  Ithaca,  Musa^us,  pupil  of  Orpheus,  Rhe- 
sus, Palcephatus,  and  divers  others  already 
mentioned.    Dictys  Creticus  also,  the  secre- 
tary of  Idomeneus,  and  Sisyphus  of  Cos,  a 
companion  of  Teucer,*  each  gave    their 
version  of  the  transactions  of  the  Greeks 
before  Troy.     Syagrus  also,  yElianf  tells 
us,  was  the  first  to  write  upon  the  Trojan 
War.     Phantasia,  also,  an  Egyptian  lady, 
wrote    ''  The   Trojan    War  "    and    '*  The 
Story  of   Ulysses,"  based,   doubtless,   on 
statements  made  by  Menelaus  and  Helen, 
and  other  travellers  at  various  times.    The 
two  works  were  preserved  at  Memphis  ; 
and  Homer,  when  in  Egypt,  obtained  the 
MS.  from  Phanites  the  Scribe,  and  based 
his  ''  Iliad  "  and  ''Odyssey"  upon  them. J 
His   acquaintance   with    Egyptian   affairs 
was  indeed  singular.     His  lower  world  is 
purely  Egyptian,  and  one  of  the  made-up 
tales  he  puts  into  the  mouth  of  Odysseus 
is  taken  bodily  from  the  Egyptian  inscrip- 
tions. And  it  is  certain  that  his  "  Proteus," 

*  Philostratus  Heroica. 
t  V.H.,  lib.  xiv.  cap.  xxL 
X  Ptolemy,  "N.H.,"  cap.  v. 


328     The  Complete  Life  of  Homer. 

and  the  sojourn  of  Menelaus  and  Helen 
in  Egypt,  and  the  friendly  hospitality  they 
received  there,  are  historical,  for  we  read 
that    in    the    shrinery   of    Proteus    was    a 
Temple  of  Venus  the  Stranger,  that  is,  of 
the  deified  Helen.    The  Egyptian  monarch 
would  naturally  be  friendly  to  those  who 
had  broken   the  power  of  Western  Asia, 
that    had    set    his     mighty    ancestors    at 
naught.     There   were,  also.   Daphne,  the 
daughterofTeiresias;  Helena, thedaughter 
of  Musaius,  and  Eumolpus  his  son  ;  Pala- 
medes  and  his  follower,  Corinnus  of  Troy, 
and  many  others.     Though  several  of  the 
foregoing  Jean  readily  be  shown  to  have 
written,  not  before,  but  long  after  him,  e.g.. 
the  Sibyl  and  Daphne,  who  prophesied  of 
him,  which  they  could  not  have  done  else  ; 
and  Thales  the  Cretan,  Lycurgus's  great 
friend  ;  or  in   his  time,  as  most  probably 
Syagrus  (see  Chapter  HI.).     Still,  doubt- 
less,   Homer    was    not    the    first    poet    of 
Greece,    any    more    than    Virgil    was    of 
Rome,  but  only  far,  immeasurably  far,  the 
greatest,  according  to  the  Greek  epigram- 
matist :  — 

"  Homer  eclipsed  the  whole  crowd  of  hymn-singers." 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer,    329 

Before  Priam  there  were  no  rhapsodoi. 
And  with  such  a  crowd  there  must  have 
been  writing.    Palamedes,  Musaius,  Dares, 
and  Dictys  especially,  it  is  almost  certain, 
lurote.     Dares  and  Dictys,  I  shall  discuss 
further    on ;    but    now    with    respect    to 
Musaeus.       If  he    had    not    written,    how 
could  Homer  have  studied  and  borrowed 
largely  from  him,  even  as  Virgil  did  from 
Ennius  ?     And  how   could   he   have  sur- 
vived for  nearly  800  years,  even   to  the 
days  of  Peisistratus  ?     Nay,  his   ''Hymn 
to     Ceres "     was    extant     in     the     time 
of  Pausanias.       But    the     case    of    Pala- 
medes is  yet  more  striking    and   instruc- 
tive.    "  The  descendants  of  Agamemnon 
suppressed    his    works    out    of    evil-eyed 
malevolence."  *      But  this  could  not  have 
been  in  Greece  (or  Orestes   had  done  it 
before  then),  but  when  they  came  to  Asia, 
and  found  the  Palamedean  version  of  the 
*'  Story  of  Troy"  perpetuated  in  the  hated 
Doric  characters  that  the  Nauplian  hero 
had  inv^ented  in  his  writings,  and  in  those 
of  his  follower,  Corinnus  of  Ilion,  through- 
out all    i^olia.      And   Homer,  when    he 
tarried  at  Cenchreai,  gathering  the  mate- 

*  Suidas. 


330     The  Complete  Life  of  Homer, 

rials  for  his  immortal  work — the  still-sur- 
viving legends  of  Chrisa,  Cylla,  and  "  the 
fertile  soil  of  Asiatic  Thebes,  so  often 
fought  for  by  Mysians  and  Lydians  and 
Hellenes  that  came  after  them  from  ^olis 
and  Lesbos,"* — suppressed  them  too,  or, 
as  Suidas  says,  "  Whilst  taking  from 
Corinnus  of  Troy  the  whole  groundwork 
of  his  poem,  and  putting  it  into  his  own 
books,"t  he  experienced  the  same  feeling  " 
(of  patriotic  antipathy),  '*  and  made  no 
mention  of  Palamedes."  %  From  Corinnus 
of  Troy  he  must  have  borrowed  much  of 
his  24th  book,  especially  '*  The  Prophecy 
of  Poseidon,"  and  may  have  learned  some- 
thing of  that  branch  of  his  family  that 
stayed  with  the  /Eneadse  at  Troy,  of 
which  we  have  a  glimpse  in  Virgil's 
"Kretheus,"  of  Melanippus  of  Percote,  and 
so  forth.  And  now  for  the  most  striking 
case  of  all.  "  Cadmus,  the  son  of  Pandion 
of  Miletus,  was  the  first  to  write  history 
in  prose,  a  little  later  than  Orpheus.  He 
compiled  "  The  Settlement  of  Miletus  and 
all  Ionia/*  in  four  books. § 

The   monumental    inscription   of    Osy- 

*  Strabo,  lib.  xiv.  t  The  "Lives,"  p.  75. 

X  The  "  Lives,"  p.  80.       §  The  "  Lives,"  p.  217. 


The  Co7nplete  Life  of  Homer,    331 

mandias,  *'  I  am  Osymandias,  king  of 
kings,  and  if  any  one  wishes  to  know 
what  I  was,  let  him  imitate  the  smallest 
of  my  exploits"  ;  and  Sesostris's,  "I  con- 
quered this  country  by  the  force  of  my 
arms  "  ;  and  the  inscription  on  the  monu- 
ment of  Belus  that  Xerxes  opened  ;  and 
that  other,  **  Learn  by  my  fate  to  reverence 
the  gods '' :  all  show  the  enormous  anti- 
quity of  writing.  Wolf  jeers  at  the  love- 
letters  of  Ariadne,  Helen,  and  Briseis ; 
but  Plutarch  tells  us  of  the  benevolent 
forgeries  that  consoled  the  hapless  derelict 
of  Naxos.*  Writing  ^vas  familiar  at  Rome 
long  before  the  birth  of  Romulus  (776  or 
so  B.c.).t  How  much  earlier,  then,  in 
Greece,  from  which  Rome  derived  it  .^ 

When  Achilles  was  besieging  Pedasus, 
and  despairing  of  taking  it,  a  virgin  of  the 
place  being  in  love  with  him,  took  a  sheep 
and  wrote  on  the  skin,  and  threw  it  into 
the  midst  of  the  Greeks,  and  upon  it  was 
written,  **  Do  not  hasten."  { 

The^^  ^'Theogony,"  '' Katalogoi,"  and 
*'  Eoai "  of  Hesiod  must  surely  have  been 
written  works. 

*  Plut.,  " Thes "  t  Plut.,  "Rom." 

X  Schol.  "  II.,"  vi.  35. 


332     The  Complete  Life  of  Homer. 

When  Hercules  was  put  upon  his  trial 
for  the  murder  of  his  too-irascible  tutor, 
he  brought  forward  a  law  of  Rhada- 
manthus  in  his  defence, — brought  forward 
parenenke.  This  law  must  obviously,  then, 
have  been  written. 

When  the  Athenians  were  building  the 
temple  of  Demeter  at  Eleusis,  they  found 
a  brazen  monumental  pillar  on  which  had 
been  written,  ''Sacred  to  the  memory  of 
Deiope."  This  Deiope,  some  say,  was 
the  wife  of  Museeus,  and  others,  the 
mother  of  Triptolemus.*  But  Musaeus 
was  the  immediate  pupil  of  Orpheus,  "  a 
gift  of  Boreas,"  that  is,  he  came  from  the 
North  to  Athens  after  his  great  master's 
death,  and  was  buried  at  Phalerum,  one 
of  the  harbours  of  Athens.  Herodotus 
thought  him  after  Homer,  and  therefore 
certainly  recognised  a  Homer  very  far 
older  and  greater  than  he  that  sang  with 
Hesiod  at  Delos.  His  oracles  were  col- 
lected in  writing  long  before  Peisistratus.f 
He  first  sang  after  the  Trojan  War.t 

Dictys    Creticus,    skilful    in    the    Phoe- 
nician  letters   brought   by  Cadmus    into 

*  Paus.,  i.  14.  t  Westermann's  "Lives." 

\  i^lian,  i.  21. 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer.      333 

Achaia,  compiled  a  diary  of  the  Trojan 
War  in  six  books  of  the  inner  bark  of  the 
linden-tree. 

N.B. — The  inner  bark  of  the  linden- 
tree  (philyra)  was  converted  into  sheets 
of  writing-paper.  The  wood  also  formed 
writing-tablets.* 

Philyra,  a  daughter  of  Oceanus,  bore  to 
Saturn  the  centaur  Cheiron,  and  was 
changed  into  a  linden  -  tree. f  Hence 
Philyreius  heros  (Cheiron),  and  philyreius 
liber  (a  book  made  of  the  linden-tree). 
The  whole  thing  is  a  transparent  allegory. 
Time  (Saturn)  begets  Penmanship  (Chei- 
ron), a  centaur,  i.e.,  swift  as  a  horse  com- 
pared with  the  tedious  hieroglyphic  system 
on  the  nymph  of  the  linden-tree,  an  exotic 
imported  from  over  the  sea,  who,  retiring 
to  the  Pelasgian  woods,  brings  forth  Chei- 
ron. That  is,  the  Pelasgi  were  the  first 
inventors  of  writing  amongst  the  Greeks. 
Hesiod  completes  the  allegory  by  telling 
us  that  Cheiron  was  the  son  of  Thero  by 
Apollo,  t    And  Cheiron,  wedding  Chariclo 

*  Ov.,  "  Fast.,"  V.  337  ;  Plin.,  xvi.  14,  258  Txix.  29. 
t  Virg.,  "  Georg.,"  vol.  392  ;  "II.,"  v.  153  ;  Hygini, 
"Fab.,"  138. 

X  Hesiod,  "  Catal.  Fragm." 


334     The  Complete  Life  of  Homer. 

(Love  of  Glory),  begets  books,  under  whose 
training  Achilles,  Jason,  Theseus,  and 
others  grew  up  to  be  the  heroes  we  read 
of,  even  as  one  of  them  himself  says  in 
Pindar : — 

"  Farewell,  Chariclo  ;  farewell,  Philyra  : 
At  last,  at  last  I  quit  thy  cave,  O  Cheiron, 
Where  thy  chaste  daughters  all  these  years  have 

reared  me. 
Oh,  never  shall  I  cease  to  prize  thy  lore."  * 

And  this  is  also  the  meaning  of  Cheiron's 
dying  for  Prometheus. 

When  Hercules  had  seized  and  crucified 
Arbolus,  the  centaur,  he  wrote  the  follow- 
ing verse  upon  the  cross.  I  give  the  Latin 
translation  : — 

"  Non    hominum     veritus     vocem   Arbolus    atque 
deorum, 
Multicomae  pice?e  suspensus  ab  arbore  pingui, 
Hicce  jacens  ccenam  longoevis  prcebeo  corvis." 

"  Because  I  fear'd  nor  God  nor  man,  you  see 
Me,  Arbolus,  on  this  accursed  tree. 
Writhing  in  utter  torment  to  and  fro, 
A  dainty  banquet  for  the  long-lived  crow." 

Ulysses  conveys  a  forged  letter,  as 
if  from   Agamemnon,  to   Clytemnestra.f 

•  Pindar,  "  Fragm." 
t  Diet.  Cret.,  i.  20. 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer,    335 

Achilles  receives  the  letter,  sent  him  by 
Clytemnestra  on  the  subject,  with  all  a 
true  lover's  excitement.* 

''Seeing  the  writing,  he  wept,"  says 
Dicaeogenes  of  one  of  the  characters  in 
his  *'  Cypria." 

The  Phoenicians  invented  a  marvellous 
method  of  engraving  letters  on  brass  and 
gold.t 

The  Greeks  wrote  (eorapsan)  the 
following  inscription  upon  the  wooden 
horse : — 

"Danai  Minen-ae  dono  dant."J 

("The  Danai  present  as  a  gift  to  Minerva.") 

Iphigenia  recognised  Orestes  by  means 
of  a  letter. 

Helen,  sailing  from  Troy,  threw  a  tripod 
into  the  sea  in  compliance  with  an  oracle, 
and  on  it  the  words  in  Phoenician  cha- 
racter, "  To  the  Wisest.  "§ 

Nestor  had  a  cup  with  the  words,  ''Dios 
Soteros,"||  embossed  in  golden  characters 
all  round  it,  as  we  learn  from  the  comic 

*  Diet.  Cret,  i.  22. 

t  Plato,  "  Critias."  %  Hygini,  "  Fab.,"  cviii. 

§  Aristotle,    "Pari  Poetices,"  p.  21,  5.      Philos- 
tratus  Heroica. 

II  Sacred  to  Jove  the  Deliverer. 


00 


6  .  T/ie  Complete  Life  of  Homer, 


poet  in  *' Athenoeus,"  in  the  following 
sparkling  fragment  of  his  dialogue  between 
a  wealthy  simpleton  and  a  sharping  friend 
that  has  just  bought  him  ''a  bargain": — 

Parasite. 

"  Shall  I  describe  the  figure  of  your  cup? 
In  the  first  place  'tis  round  and  wondrous  little, 
Old,  oh,  so  old,  both  handles  warped  with  age, 
And  letters  in  a  circle." 

Knicknack. 
"  Sure,  not  the  eleven 
In  gold— AlOi:  SOTEPOS.* 
Parasite. 

No,  another.f 

The  above  shows  how  implicit  was  the 
faith  of  the  Greeks  in  the  existence  of  the 
very  most  delicate  arts  of  writing  long 
long  before  Homer's  time. 

But  what  we  read  in  Homer,  to  which 
the  comic  poet  here  refers,  is  yet  more 
interesting  : — 

"  And  the  cup  which  the  old  man 
Brought  with  him  o'er  the  foam 
Studded  with  nails  of  gold  :  too  rare 
It  was  to  leave  at  home."  J 

*  Meaning,  of  course,  the  eleven  letters  contained 
in  these  two  words. 

t  Athenaeus,  xiv.  %  Iliad,  x.  395. 


The  Complete  Life  of  Hoiner, 


oat 


*'  Spitted  with  golden  nails,"  so  as  to 
form  the  above  inscription  by  means  of 
dots  and  curves,  a  small  golden-headed 
nail  for  every  dot,  and  a  large  golden- 
headed  nail  for  every  curve. 

The  Golden  Fleece  is  said  to  have  been 
neither  more  nor  less  than  ^  Liber  Aureus. 

Paris  wrote  ''  The  Praises  of  Venus." 

Diana  had  a  pet  stag  with  an  inscription 
on  its  collar. 

"  Who,  when  he  perceived  it,  having 
written  it  all  on  a  skin,  sends  it  to  Semi^ 
ramis  by  a  messenger,  and  she  having 
read  it.  .   .  ."  * 

P^or  the  inscription  on  the  tomb  of 
Semiramis,  see  Plutarch, ''  Reg.et  Imperat. 
Apopth." 

"Oh,  that  mine  enemy  would  write  a 
book  !"  cried  the  Chaldcean  some  six  thou- 
sand years  ago. 

Pilpay  wrote  in  Persian  his  '' Fables" 
and  his  ''  Floating  Island  "  (both  of  which 
we  still  have),  2,000  years  before  the 
Christian  era. 

Ani  caused  his  recension  of  *'  The  Book 
of  the  Dead  "  to  be  written  about  1400  b.c. 
How   long   before    *'  The    Book    of    the 

*  Nicolaus  Damascenus. 
z 


38    T/ie  Complete  Life  of  Homer. 


Dead "  was  first  written,  I  do  not  know, 
but  the  manuscript  of  Ani's  elaborate 
recension,  with  its  charming  vignettes, 
survives  to  this  hour. 

The  ladies  of  the  Egyptian  Court  carved 
an  inscription,  which  Ovid  has  translated,* 
on  the  tomb  of  the  first  astronomer 
between  fifteen  and  sixteen  centuries  B.C. 

Hercules  honoured  the  river  Alpheus 
by  making  Alpha  the  first  letter  in  the 
Greek  alphabet.  Of  course,  this  means 
that  the  river  was  so  named  from  time 
immemorial,  from  its  course  being  in  that 
shape.  So  there  must  have  been  writing 
before  the  Lyre,  because  the  Lyre  derives 
Its  name  from  the  letter  "lambda,"  which 
it  in  shape  resembles. 

In  the  temple  of  Juno  at  Hierapolis  are 
two  Dionysiac  emblems,  with  this  inscrip- 
tion, "  These  emblems  of  Dionysus  I  have 
dedicated  to  my  stepmother."t 

All  antiquity,  from  Dictys  and  Dares  to 
the  Attic  tragedians,  from  the  Attic  trage- 
dians to  Ovid,  and  the  Augustan  age,  from 
Ovid,  and  the  Augustan  age  to  Plutarch, 
Strabo,  and  Lucian,  are  full  of  the  antiquity 

*  Ovid,  "Met.,"  ii.  327,  328. 
t  Lucian,  "  De  Syria  Dea." 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer,    339 

of  writing.     Ouintus  Smyrnaeus  alone,  in 
his  timidly-servile  imitation  of  the  M^onian 
swan,  is  strict  non-committal,  but  Tzetzes 
makes  up  for  him.    From  the  Trojan  war, 
then,  to  the  Byzantine  era,  the  consensus 
is  uniform.     *'  But  Dares,"  you  say,  "  is  a 
patent  forgery,  and  so  is  Dictys."     Let  us 
consider.     And  I  will  use  here  no  recon- 
dite work,  but  one  designed  for  the  higher 
forms  of  our  great  public  schools, — ''Dr. 
Smith's    Classical     History."      He   says  : 
"  Eupraxis  wrote  Dictys  in  Greek  in  the 
time  of  Nero."     He  may,  or  he  may  not 
have  done  so,  but  that  is  no  proof  what- 
ever  that   Dictys    himself  did    not  write 
long,    long   before.      But   grant    he    did. 
*'Q.   Septimius    Romanus   translated    it." 
But    when  .^      We    shall    see    presently. 
''iEmilius  Probus  wrote   Nepos,"  in   the 
same  sense    that   Eupraxis  wrote   Dictys 
"  at  the  close  of  the  fourth  century,  in  the 
reign  of  Theodosius."     Now  who,  I  ask, 
so  likely  to  forge   Nepos's  name  as  the 
man  that  forged  his  work  .^     And,  making 
allowance   for   the   fact   that   Dares   is  a 
translation  written  in  a  feigned  hand,  that 
is,   made   as   unlike   the   author's   known 
work  as  possible,  and  that  the  Nepos  we 

z  2 


340     The  Complete  Life  of  Hojncr, 

possess    is,  as   Dr.    Smith  very  probably 
suggests,  in  reality  an  abridgment  of  the 
crenuine    work  of   the    elegant    Augustan 
writer,   is  it    not    in    the    highest    degree 
probable  that  Probus  wrote  both  ?     And 
now  turn  again  to  Dictys.     What  imita- 
tions of  Nepos,  and  still  more  of  Sallust, 
do  we  find  there  !     Does  it  not  look  as  if 
the   two   wrote   at    the  same    epoch,    and 
whilst  each   writer   was   equally  deep    m 
Sallust.  Nepos,  Virgil,  &c.,  the  one  stole 
and  the  other  forged  ?    The  two  works,  as 
they  are  usually  published  together,  have 
all    the  appearance  of  being  written  to- 
gether, the   one  against   the  other  quite 
possibly  in    a   very   friendly    intercourse. 
The  one  might  call  himself  Nepos,  and 
the  other  might  call  himself  Sallust,  and 
the  dedication  of  the   Dares   ''Cornelius 
Nepos  Sallustio  suo  salutem  "  might  have 
a  very  double   significance.      I   conclude, 
therefore,  that  Eupraxis  forged  Dictys,  and 
Septimius    Eupraxis,  and    Probus   Dares, 
much  as  Hermogenes  forged  Herodotus, 
and  as  I  have  forged  Hermogenes,  whereby, 
not  without  a  very  solid  basis  dating  from 
the  vague  traditions  of  an  almost  indefi- 
nite antiquity,  a  curiously  non-analysable 


The  Compleie  Life  of  Horner,    341 

mixture  of  truth  and  fiction, — of  that  which 
is,  and  that  which  is  not, — in  the  original 
authors  has  been  evolved. 

The  temples  of  Greece  were  full  of 
ancient  inscriptions,  from  the  time  of  Am- 
phitryon downwards.  Four  in  particular  ; 
one  of  Amphitryon's  after  his  victory  over 
the  Teleboae  ;  one  of  Scaeas  the  boxer  s  ; 
one  of  Laodamas's  ;  then  there  was  The- 
seus's  celebrated  column  "  on  this  side 
Achaia,  on  that  Ionia,"  Cadmus's  donary, 
the  inscription  at  Amyclse,  the  brazen 
tablet  of  Pliny,  &c.,  &c.  Herodotus,  Pau- 
sanias,  Aristotle,  Demosthenes,  Diodorus, 
and  Pliny  all  tell  us  of  them.  And  who 
was  Wolf  that  he  should  coolly  pooh-pooh 
such  men  'i 

The  descendants  of  Agamemnon  de- 
stroyed the  works  of  his  kinsman,  Pala- 
medes,  out  of  envy. 

Diomedes  and  Ulysses  caused  a  captive 
Phrygian  to  write  to  Palamedes  a  letter 
in  the  name  of  Priam. 

Mutianus,  thrice  consul,  ''  Sarpedonis 
epistolam  a  Troja  scriptam  in  Lyciam  ipse 
legit."* 

The  learned  grammarian,  Apollodorus, 

*  Pliny,  xiii.  13. 


342     The  Co7nplete  Life  of  Ho7ne7\ 


testifies  that  Minos  wrote  (egrapse)*  the 
laws,  which  Plato  further  informs  us  were 
preserved  at  Gnossus  on  tablets  of  brass,t 
and,  if  the  authority  of  these  twain  is  in- 
sufficient, we  have  also  that  of  Pausanias,  J 
and  that  of  Horace,  who  tells  us  in  his 
"  Ars  Poetica  "  : — 

**  To  build  up  walls,  §  and  laws  on  wood  rehearse,  || 
E'en  before  Homer  sang,  ennobled  verse  ;  "  f 

and  that  of  ^schylus,  in  his  **  Eumenides  " : 
a  quintuple  chain  of  testimony,  against 
which  the  waves  of  hyper-scepticism  beat 
altogether  in  vain. 

And  shall  we  entirely  ignore  the  chro- 
nicles of  Sparta  from  Procles,  and  of  Elis 
from  Oxylus,  and  the  long  roll  of  kings, 
priests,  and  priestesses  at  Sicyon,  Corinth, 
Athens,  Halicarnassus,  and  Argos  ?  And 
yet  worse,  along  with  them  shall  we  im- 
piously set  at  nought  the  venerable  autho- 
rity of  Berosus,  Sanchuniathon,  and  Ma- 
netho,  the  cuneiform  inscriptions  in  the 
temple  of  Belus,  the  **  Phoenikika  semata," 
wherein  the  births,  deaths,  and  marriages 


*  Bibl,  iii.  i,  2. 
X  Pausanias,  v.  20. 
j  As  Minos  did. 


t  Plato,  "Laws,"  xiii.  13, 
§  As  Amphion  did. 
\  A.  P.,  391-401. 


T/ie  Complete  Life  of  Hoiner,    343 

of  the  gods  themselves  were  recorded,  the 
sacred  scrolls  attested  by  the  grey  monu- 
ments, the  marvellous  evidences  of  writing 
in  the  far  East, — in  India  and  Persia  and 
China, — reaching  coundess  ages  beyond 
the  Deluge,  and  the  testimony  of  all  ages 
and  of  all  the  world,  from  Germany*  to 
China,  and  from  Etruria  to  Abyssinia  .^ 

Sophocles  tells  us  that  the  ships  of  the 
Greeks  at  the  siege  of  Troy,  just  as 
amongst  us  in  the  present  day,  had  their 
names  painted  upon  their  sides  ''  in  Phoe- 
nician characters."  Rather,  I  should  ima- 
gine, **in  purple  or  red  letters."  Only 
the  words  underscored  now  survive,  but  I 
trust  I  have  filled  up  the  gap  not  altogether 
improbably  : — 

"  S»:a^oc  ^£  rovyofi*  £i(rop(i)(Tiv  e/Kpaveg 
^oiviKiotTi  Trap  £07/vc  ypa/j/jaai 

KaKrjy  TraoEinu  evTrpeireg  Koof]^  Eiktjv" — 

"  And  every  ship  its  name  displayed 
In  purple  letters,  plain  to  see  ; 
With  blushing  cheek  of  love-sick  maid, 
All  beautiful  exceedinglee."  t 


♦  Tacitus,  "  Germania,"  iii.,  where  he  speaks  of 
inscriptions  on  altars  and  monuments  dating  from 
the  Trojan  War. 

t  "  The  Shepherds/'  Fragment  xx. 


344     ^^^^  Complete  Life  of  Homer. 

And  Homer  confirms  his  account.  He 
calls  the  ships  "black,"  never  "black- 
cheekt" :  "  red-cheekt,"  or  "  purple-cheekt," 
never  red  or  purple.  That  is  to  say,  the 
whole  vessel  was  covered  with  pitch,  to 
protect  it  against  the  water  and  the  air  ; 
but  its  name,  as  finely  embellished  with 
tasteful  decorations  as  might  be,  was 
painted  in  red  or  purple  on  its  peach-like 
cheek. 

The  chest  in  which  Cypselus  was  hidden 
was  an  heirloom  of  the  days  of  Troy, 
wrought,  like  the  Bayeux  tapestry,  to 
commemorate  that  event.  Nothing  later 
was  commemorated.  And  it  was  plenti- 
fully garnished  with  epigrammatic  in- 
scriptions, of  which  the  most  curious, — 
that  on  the  Devil's  door-key, — ran  as 
follows : — 

"  By  me  is  lockt  the  unseen  bourne 
P'rom  whence  no  travellers  return."  * 

The  legend  of  the  "  Apple  of  Discord," 
with  its  inscription,  **  Detur  pulchriori,"  is, 
doubtless,  as  old  as  the  "  Cypria "  of 
Stasinus, — that  is,  if  we  may  credit  the 
legend,  as  old  as    Homer  himself.     The 

*  Pausanias,  v.  19. 


The  Coinplete  Life  of  Homer.    345 

undoubted  fragments  we  have  of  his 
*'Cypria"  tend  very  strongly  that  way. 

Tzetzes  and  Dictys  also  abound  in 
stories  of  the  use  of  writing  during  and 
before  the  Siege  of  Troy. 

When  the  grave  of  Alcmene  was  opened 
by  Agesilaus  at  Haliartus,  there  was  found 
in  it  a  brazen  tablet  with  much  wondrously- 
old  writing  on  it  undecipherable,  though 
plainly  visible,  owing  to  the  wasting  away 
of  the  brass,  but  the  form  of  the  characters, 
was  peculiar  and  barbarous,  and  very  like 
/Egyptian.* 

There  was  an  epigram  on  the  monu- 
ment of  Coraebus,  who  won  at  the  games 
of  Iphitus  (884  B.C.),  saying:  ''Coraebus, 
first  of  men,  won  at  01ympia."t 

Hierophile  the  Sibyl,  who,  Cassandra- 
like, prophesied  before  the  Trojan  War 
that  Helen  would  be  the  destruction  of 
Asia,  wrote  hymns,  &c. 

The  Story  of  Hyacinthus,  a  poet-king 
of  Sparta,  is  significant.  Ages  before 
Homer,  the  letters  of  woe  were  noticed 
upon  this  loveliest  of  flowers,  and  the 
myth  was  evolved  therefrom. 


(( 


Wtwov  fitv  £yw,  £^npa(T(r£  ce  Oeiog  *0^?/pog  "- 


Plut.,  "  Mem.  Socr." 


t  Paus.,  X.  12. 


346     The  Complete  Life  of  Hovier, 

(sings  Hesiod,  some  nine  centuries  before 
Christ)  : — 

"  I  sang,  and  my  sainted  fellow-minstrel 
Took  down  what  I  sang  in  writing." 

This  Hne  is  not  admitted  by  modern 
editors  among  the  fragments  of  Hesiod. 
It  appears  to  have  served  as  a  one-Hne 
epigram  upon  the  question,  **  What  Apollo 
said  concerning  Homer";*  but  it  has  the 
very  ring  of  Hesiod,  and  is,  doubtless, 
what  he,  and  not  Apollo,  said  ;  and  comes, 
as  I  have  placed  it,  fourth  line  in  that 
most  interesting  fragment  of  Hesiod, 
Fragment  ccxxvii.,  Goettlingius,  p.  303. 

-^schylus  attributes  the  commencement 
of  letters  to  Prometheus. 

Hercules,  having  received  an  oracle 
from  Dodona,  preserved  it  by  writing  it 
down  on  a  tablet  which  the  Scholiast  tells 
us  was  the  customary  thing  to  do. 

Albeit  we  read  in  Suidas,  *'  Oui  olim 
Apollinem  consulebant  oracula  obsignata 
accipiebant." 

Hercules  also  used  a  seal  made  out  of 
worm-eaten  wood,  which,  we  are  told,  his 

•  Allatius,  "De  pat.  Hem.,"  p.  24. 


The  .Complete  Life  of  Homer,    347 

Lacedemonian  descendants  used  for  cen- 
turies after  him. 

Euripides  attributes  the  application  of 
writing  to  the  making  of  wills,  the  com- 
municating with  absent  friends,  &c.,  to 
Palamedes.  Some  say  he  invented  all 
the  original  sixteen  letters.  But,  the 
authority  of  Tacitus,  Chrysostom,  and 
others  notwithstanding,  this  is  mere  ex- 
aggeration. However,  he  may  perhaps 
have  invented  some.  Hyginus,  '*  Fab."  26, 
says  he  introduced  eleven,  and  the  Fates 
five.  Servius  (ad  Virg.,  *'yEn.,"  ii.  82) 
says  he  invented  three  (fl,  p,  x)  and  the 
rough  breathing.  But  it  is  certain  that 
5  was  a  letter  of  the  Phoenician  alphabet, 
and  Aristotle  doubts  his  having  invented 
even  the  remaining  two.  He  probably 
did  little  more  than  introduce  an  improved 
system  of  writing. 

After  his  murder,  his  brother  ^ax 
sent  a  number  of  boats  to  Nauplius, 
his  father,  on  the  woodwork  of  each  of 
which  was  written  the  shameful  particulars 
thereof, — ^just  like  floating  bottles  now- 
adays,— in  the  hope  that  one  of  them  would 
reach  the  poor  bereaved  old  man ;  and  he 
let  him  know  again,  I  presume  in  the  same 


348     The  Complete  Life  of  Homer. 

way,  when  the  Greeks  were  coming  over. 
This  is  interesting,  surely,  as  the  first  infant 
dawn  of  our  present  stupendous  packet 
service.  Aristophanes  pleasantly  refers  to 
it,  as  a  household  story  familiar  to  every 
one,  in  his  "  Thesmophorusa^." 

We  have,  in  Cramers  "  Anecdota,"  * 
a  fragment  of  the  epitaph  on  poor  old 
Laertes,  who  died,  in  all  probability,  of  a 
broken  heart  in  consequence  of  the  exile 
of  his  beloved  son  ;  but  so  corrupt,  that  we 
can  only  gather  that  it  was  a  very  mourn- 
ful one,  as  it  might  well  be  under  the  cir- 
cumstances. 

Sisyphus  {i.e.,  Wise-as-a-God)  wrote  his 
name  inside  the  hoofs  of  his  cattle,  just  as 
we  write  our  names  on  the  fly-leaves  of 
our  books,  by  way  of  precaution  against 
thieves. 

Sophocles  is  very  precise  as  to  the  great 
muster-roll  in  King  Agamemnon's  army. 
Ulysses  addresses  Agamemnon  thus  : — 

"  Throned  on  yon  chair  of  state,  take  thou  the  roll, 
And  see  by  it  if  any  are  not  here 
That  swore  to  follow  thee  to  perjured  Troy."  t 


*  Vol.  iii.,  p.  507. 

t  "  The  Muster  of  the  Greeks,"  Fragment  iv. 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer,    349 

And  in  a  fragment  of  the  ''Pleisthenes," 
I  think,  of  Euripides,  preserved  by  Tzetzes 
in  his  Scholia  on  himself,  we  have  the 
following  most  interesting  morceau  : — 

TToWiof  yefjovffui  Ao^tou  yr]nv^a-u)v  " — 

*'  There  are,  indeed  there  are  manuscripts 
Full  of  many  oracles  of  Loxias." 

What  a  strange  collection  of  lying  pro- 
phecies after  the  event,  that  of  Homer's 
death  at  los  amongst  them,  must  that 
have  been.  With  so  many  sheep  sacri- 
ficed every  day,  there  could  have  been  no 
lack  of  sheep-skins  to  bedaub  with  them. 
What  a  drug  in  the  market  sheep-skins 
must  have  been  at  any  tolerably  well-to-do 
temple,  we  can  judge,  from  that  curious 
passage  in  Horace,  where  a  servant  of  the 
priest  is  spoken  of  as  so  utterly  sick  of  sacri- 
ficial cakes  that  he  fairly  runs  away  to  be  rid 
of  them,  and  get  to  plain  baker's  bread.* 

Again,  all  that  we  are  told  of  Homer's 
venerable,  more  than  father,  Phemius,  is 
an  irresistible  proof  that  writing  was  in 
familiar  use  at  least  one  generation  before 

*  Hon,  "Epis.,"  i.  10,  11.  10,  it 


350    The  Complete  Life  of  Homer. 

Homer.  Phemius,  the  son  of  Pronapus, 
the  teacher  of  Homer  (Tzetzes,  *'Chil.," 
V.  834),  is  enumerated  amongst  those  who 
used  the  Pelasgic  letters  before  the  intro- 
duction of  the  Phoenician,  and  is  charac- 
terised as  a  graceful  composer  of  song 
("  Diod.,"  iii.  66).  According  to  one  of 
the  Scholia,  he  invented  the  mode  of 
writing  from  left  to  right,  now  in  use,  as 
contradistinguished  from  the  bottstrophedon 
and  other  methods.*  What  we  read,  that 
he  came  to  Smyrna  from  Athens,  corre- 
sponds well  enough  with  what  we  read  in 
the  Homeric  cypher,  that  he  came  from 
Argos  to  Thrace.  He  was,  doubtless,  far 
on  in  middle  age  when  he  wooed  poor 
reluctant  Kretheis,  and  wrote  Epigram 
vi.  : — 

*'  Hear  me,  Juno  Lucina,  and  grant  that  this  woman 
May  refuse  the  bed  of  young  hare-brained  roysterers, 
And  delight  in    old   fellows  whose    temples   are 

hoary  : 
Whose  prime's  past,  but  their  soul  yet  feels  tender 

emotions." 

Homer  ca7i  not  have  written  it,  either  at 
hard  upon  seventy  (still  less  at  ninety), 
and  under  the  circumstances  detailed  on 

*  Smith,   "  Diet.  Gr.  and  Rom.  Biog.,"  art,  "  Pro- 
napides." 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer,    351 

p.  15  of  the  **  Lives,"  but  he  may  have  re- 
membered it  with  true  filial  reverence,  and 
given  it  a  place  in  his  "  Ilias  Mikra,"  in 
his  story  of  Phoenix's  father,  Amyntor,  and 
quoted  it  from  Phemius  as  Sophocles 
afterwards  quoted  it  from  him,  by  no 
means  ineptly.  Phemius  was  doubtless 
the  Phoenix  of  the  ''  Iliad."  From  which 
we  learn  (i)  that  he  knew  Kretheis  from 
Homer's  earliest  infancy.  (2)  That  he 
had  no  children  by  her.  Take  this  pas- 
sage  : — 

I 

"And  He  received  me  father-like;  and  I 

Loved  you  so  dearly,  you  would  still  decline 

To  meat  with  any  one  but  me  to  hie, 

But  went  in  still,  your  hand  linkt  fast  in  mine. 

2 

"  And  as  for  your  sweet  mouth  I  carved  the  bread, 
And  fill'd  the  cup,  you  sat  upon  my  knee, 

And  oft  your  wine  upon  my  bosom  shed, 

As,  your  arms  round  my  neck,  you  fondled  mee.''* 

And,  observing  that  '*  He"  is  Maeon,  who. 
if  not  Homer's  real  father,  was  at  least  his 
father  by  adoption,  can  we  doubt  that  this 
passage  refers  to  Phemius's  care  of  our 
poet's  early  childhood  .^  And  after  Maeon's 

*  II.,  ix.  485-491. 


352     The  Complete  Life  of  Homer, 

exile,  when  the  poor  boy,  his  eyes  suffused 
with  tears  of  helpless  rage,  wanted  to  take 
a  boat  down  the  Meles  to  Egypt  to  fetch 
his  father  to  punish  *'  the  bad,  bad  men  that 
vexed  dear  mamma  so,  "  *  who  but  the 
good,  kind  old  man  stood  by  his  side,  and 
took  him  to  his  bosom  with  the  joyous 
news  that  his  mother  should  be  vexed  so 
no  more, — that  he  was  about  to  make  her 
his  wife,  and  him  his  dear  boy,  as  he  had 
no  boys  of  his  own,  nor  was  likely  to  have.t 
Lastly,  that  Phemius  was  Homer's  school- 
master appears  from  ''Iliad,"  ix.  438-443. 

Harmodice,  wife  of  Midas,  daughter  of 
Agamemnon,  king  of  Cyme,  not  the 
Agamemnon,  of  course,  but  an  illegitimate 
Asiatic  Greek  descendant  of  his,  first  struck 
money,  as  was  natural,  her  husband  (the 
Midas  whose  epitaph  Homer  wrote)  being 
so  fabulously  wealthy,  for  the  Cumaeans. 
It  is  reasonable,  therefore,  to  suppose  that, 
coinage  having  commenced  in  Asiatic 
Greece  in  Homer's  time,  the  token  that 
was  struck  in  Homers  honour  (see  p.  250) 
was  struck  very  shortly  after  his  death, 
the  more  so,  as,  after  his  prize  epitaph 
on  their  father's  tomb,  some  thirty  years 

*  Odyss.,  i.  &  ii.  t  I^->  i^-  493-495- 


The  Complete  Life  of  Ho?ner.    353 

before,    Midas's  sons  would  be   only  too 
happy  to  supply  the  gold  for  it.     But  this 
coin  contatfied  a  figure  of  Homer  with  his 
ow7t  immortal  "  Kuklos  "  before  him.     But, 
by  the  way,  that  monument  and  the  vase 
that  paid  for  it, — how  can    we  reconcile 
it    with    the    contempt    with    which    the 
Cumaeans  treated  our  poet  ?     They  could 
not  have  known  then  that  the  Princes  of 
the  land  were  about  to  honour  their  poor 
blind  Cinderello  .so   highly.     They  never 
dreamt  that  the   epitaph  he  had  sent  in 
would  be  the  one  finally  accepted.     And 
when  it  was,  he  had  laid   them  under  a 
curse,  and,  either  through  their  malignity 
or  the  Princes'  neglect,  he  did  not  get  his 
reward   till   his  death   awoke  either  their 
remorse  or  the   Princes'   tardy  gratitude. 
Then  at  last  came  to  Chios  the  precious 
vase  that  Homer  (the  Younger)  ultimately 
dedicated  at  Delphi. 

Acontius  ensnared  Cydippe  as  she  was 
sacrificing  to  Diana.  He  threw  before 
her  an  apple  upon  which  he  had  written, 
'*  I  swear,  by  the  sanctuary  of  Diana,  to 
marry  Acontius."  She  read  the  words 
aloud,  and  Diana  held  her  bound  by  the 
oath  she  had  thus  unwittingly  taken. 

2  A 


354     The  Complete  Life  of  Homer. 

Pheedra  writes  her  last  dying  letter  to 
Theseus  on  a  tablet*  the  ''pugillares  cera^" 
that  Pliny  tells  us  were  in  use  in  Homer's 

time. 

Agamemnon  writes  and   seals  a  letter 

to  go  to  Clytemnestra. 

The  Sibyl  in  Virgil  writes  her  oracles 
on  leaves  for  want  of  paper. 

The  ancient  genealogies  were  based 
upon  brazen  records  providentially  dis- 
covered after  being  hidden  for  a  length  of 
time  underground. 

The  Athenians  and  Argives  dedicated 
at  Delphi  a  treaty  of  perpetual  amity  en- 
graved on  a  brazen  tripod,  t 

Herodotus,  our  earliest  authority  for 
the  introduction  of  the  ''  Kadmika  gram- 
mata "  into  Greece  in  the  fourteenth  cen- 
tury (B.C.),  declares  that  he  examined 
numerous  undoubted  specimens  with  his 

own  eyes. 

The  numerous  Lives  of  our  poet,  dating 
from  the  time  when  Herodotus  wrote  his 
*' Persian  War,"  and  Pigres  now  imitated 
our  poet,  and  now  interpolated  him  down 
to  Plutarch   and   Proclus  and  Suidas,  all 

*  Eur.,  <'Phjedr.";  Plut.,  *'Par." 
t  Eur.,  Suppl.,  1 197-1204. 


The  Complete  Life  of  Ho7ner.    355 

make    continual    mention   of    writing    in 
Homer's  time. 

The  father  of  Acusilaus  was  the  fortu- 
nate  discoverer  of  the  said  brazen  records 
about  565  B.C.     As  they  were  little  more 
than    Hesiod   improved,   that   poet   must 
have  had  them  before  him  in  composing 
his  various  genealogical  works  some  three 
centuries  earlier.       Unless,   then,   we  are 
prepared   to    accuse   the   earliest   of    the 
Greek   historians  of  a  fraud  that  to  the 
Hellenic  mind  must  have  been  to  the  very 
last  degree  detestable  in   its  sacrilegious 
™P^^^y>  niy  point  is  more  than  proved. 
More    than   a   century    before    the    first 
Olympiad,    not    only    did    Hesiod    write 
but  he  wrote  with  copper  plates   before 
him  of  unknown  and  quite  indefinite  an- 
tiquity.* 

The  proofs  that  Hesiod  wrote  are  abso- 
lutely irresistible.     Others  say  it  of  him 
e,g.,  Tzetzes,  in  his  ''  Chiliades  "  :— 


<«^«\\» 


t:o\V  eTTaOey  Tratrag  ce  \eyu)v  nieypaxParo  f3iflXovQ  "  ; 

and    Lesches,    in    -The    Agon/'     Hes. 
Goettling,  p.  322  ;  and  he  says  it  of  himself 

*  Suidas,  art.  *•  Acusilaus." 
2  A  2 


356     The  Complete  Life  of  Homer, 

(as  we  have  seen,  and  shall  see)  again  and 

again. 

The  ancients  never  dreamt  of  doubting 
that  Homer's  poems  were  written.  With 
such  a  stupendous  flood  of  song  as  had 
come  into  existence, — Homer,  Hesiod, 
Orpheus,  Linus,  Musaeus,  and  the  CycHc 
poets, — such  an  idea  was  inconceivable. 

Lastly,  Homer  himself,  more  suo,  hints 
at  the  existence  of  writing  exactly  as  he 
hints  at  the  incidents  of  his  own  personal 
history — hints  most  unmistakably,  but  only 
once  speaks  plainly  out,  in  speaking  of  the 
famous  letter  of  Pr^tus  to  Jobates.     That 
this   letter  must   have   been  written,  not 
pictorial,  is  clearly  proved  by  the  parallel 
case  of  the  letter  of  David  to  Joab,  sent 
by  the  hand  of  Uriah,  two  centuries  later, 
but  still   some  twenty  years    before   the 
death  of  Homer.    And  besides,  as  ''  Phoi- 
nikika   semata  "=*'  Kadmika  grammata," 
there  should  be  no  doubt  what  ''semata 
lugra  "  must  mean.  And  only  hyper-critical 
scepticism     the    most    incurably    morbid 
could  have  mistranslated  words  so  plain  as 
**  grapsas  en  pinaki  ptukto  thumophthora 

polla." 

But  Wolfs  scepticism  goes  far  beyond 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer,     357 

this.  Apollodorus  paraphrases  the  story 
in  Homer  as  follows: — **  He  gave  Bellero- 
phon  a  letter  to  take  to  Jobates,  in  which 
It  was  written  that  he  should  kill  Bellero- 
phon.  And  Jobates  having  read  the 
writing.  .  .  ."  Whatever  Wolf  may  say, 
mistake  here  is  impossible.  Only  ''  epig- 
nous'' means  something  more  than  "anag- 
nous,"  just  as  ** semata"  means  something 
more  than  **grammata." 

Herodian,  Pollux,  and  all  the  tragic 
poets  (by  Wolf's  own  confession)  support 
this  view  in  the  numerous  parallel  passages 
to  be  found  in  their  works;  but  a  very  plain 
passage  of  our  poet,  and  the  yet  plainer 
interpretation,  are  all-sufficient  in  them- 
selves, and  to  adduce  parallel  passages  is 
mere  lily-painting  waste  of  time.  "^  The 
sealed  tablets  of  Bellerophon,  all  Hellenic 
antiquity,  from  ^schylus  to  Herodian  and 
Pollux,  understood  as  we  do ;  and  Apollo- 
dorus, Zenobius,  Tzetzes,  Plutarch,  and 
other  writers  expressly  interpret  them  by 
the  word,  ^'epistole";  and  the  *' semata 
lugra  "  no  Greek  writer  before  Eustathius, 
not  even  the  Scholiast,  ever  dreamt  of 
explaining  by  any  word  but  "grammata." 
How,  indeed,  could  he,  with  the  **  Phoini- 


358     The  Complete  Life  of  Homer, 

kika  semata  Kadmou  "  in  his  mind's  eye, 
and  when  the  poet  expressly  states  that 
they  were  written, — that  Praetus  wrote 
them  (egrapse)  ? 

Nor  does  our  immortal  Bentley  differ 
from  the  countless  writers  of  antiquity 
before  him  in  saying  that  Proetus  wrote 
to  Jobates.  He  only  says  that  Praetuss 
communication  ''was  not  an  epistle,  but 
a  *Pinax  ptuktos'  a  'deltos,'  corresponding 
to  the  Latin  *  tabellae  pugillares,'  or  *  codi- 
cilli,' — small  leaves  of  wood  covered  with 
bees-wax,  and  so  written  on  by  a  pen  of 
metal ;  and,  as  soon  as  read,  erased,  and 
the  wax  smoothed  anew,  and  returned 
with  an  answer  upon  the  same  wax 
where  the  former  letter  was  written."  * 

But,  if  we  still  think  Homer's  language 
a  little  poetically  vague,  that  would  only 
tend  to  show  that  Homer,  however  well 
acquainted  with  the  art  of  writing  himself, 
may  yet  wisely  have  doubted  whether  it 
was  known  in  so  preposterously  super- 
natural an  epoch  and  habitat  as  that  of  the 
Chimaera. 

And  how  should  Achilles  know  that  the 

*  Bentley,  "Phalaris"  (Bell  &  Daldy),  pp.  505, 
506.     Cf.  Eur.  ^'Iph.  Aul,"  35-37. 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer.    359 

young  musician  on  his  shield  was  singing 
a  song  of  Linus,  if  there  were  not'^the 
flower  of  woe  upon  it,  and  ''  ai "  for 
*'ailinon".? 

The  Speaking  Hides  I  take  to  threaten 
the  vengeance  of  Apollo's  darling  proteg'e 
upon  Thestorides  for  basely  stealino-  his 
MSS.  ^ 

The  lot-drawing  taken  alone  may  not 
seem    to   imply   a  knowledge   of  writing 
more  than  the  long  and  short  straws  of 
savages,  the  leap-frog  of  schoolboys,  and 
the  forfeits  at  Turn  the  Trencher;    but, 
taken  in   connexion  with  the  devices  on 
the  arms  in  '*  The  Seven  against  Thebes  " 
and  countless  such  passages  in  the  Greek 
poets,  and  Hesiod's  ''Shield  of  Hercules," 
and  Homer's  "  Shield  of  Achilles,"  from 
which  it  is  plagiarized,  it  certainly  does  ; 
it  certainly  indicates  a  state  of  society  in 
which  writing  was  in  embryo  or  in  a  state 
of  suspended  animation,  if  you  please,  but 
still  there,  and  which    only    needed    the 
fostering  breezes  of  the  spring  of  peace  to 
spring  out  of  the  icebound  torpor  of  its 
hybernation  into  a  blaze  of  song.     Homer 
does  not  exactly  tell    us   that  his  heroes 
wrote,   but  he   certainly  tells   us  that  he 


360     The  Complete  Life  of  Homer, 

did.  But,  grant  the  lot-drawing  of  the 
heroes  nihil  ad  rem,  what  shall  we  say  of 
the  lot-drawing  of  the  sons  of  wealthy 
Castor  for  his  vast  possessions  ?  *  What 
legal  practitioner  would  not  smile  at  this 
being  done  without  writing,  and  a  good 
deal  of  writing  too  ?  And  how  could 
Danaus  have  distributed  his  fifty  daughters 
amongst  his  fifty  nephews  by  lot,  as  we 
are  told  he  did,  without  writing  their 
names  down  ? 

Again,  the  account  of  the  tomb  of  Ilus 
is  utterly  unintelligible  tautology,  unless 
there  were  an  inscription  upon  it.  Ovid, 
whose  works  swarm  with  references  to 
writing,  even  in  the  earliest  times,  certainly 
informs  us  that  the  name  of  the  deceased 
was  carved  upon  his  tombstone,  usually,  if 
not  always,  with  an  inscription  exactly  as 
in  our  churchyards.  We  have  seen  this 
in  the  case  of  Phaethon,  already  quoted, 
and  see  it  again  in  the  case  of  Meleager: — 

"They  clasp  the  stone,  mark'd  with  his  sacred  name, 
In  their  fond  arms,  and  pour  tears  on  the  same." 

There  is  nothing  new  under  the  sun. 
As  it  is  now,  even  so  it  was  then :  unless 

*  Odyss.,  xiv.  208,  209. 


The  Complete  Lije  of  Homer.     36 1 

we  have  distinct  proof  to  the  contrary,  a 
tomb  such  as  that  of  Ilus  implies  writinc. 
And,  indeed,  we  have  full  proof  of  the 
above  view  in  the  tombstone  of  Midas 
and  that  of  our  poet  himself,  as  alread^ 
discussed,  in  Herodotus's  "  Life  of  Lives '' 
and  m  that  of  Laertes  a  few  pages  Jo. 
l-astly  how  else  can  we  possibly  under- 
stand those  striking  lines  of  our  poet  :— 

"This  stone  marks  the  grave, 
For  ever  and  aye. 
Of  a  hero  so  brave. 

Whilom  Hector  did  slay  "  ? 

Again,  had  Homer  and  Hesiod  noJ 
known  how  to  write,  they  would  no  more 
have  given  us  their  shields  of  Achilles  and 
Hercules  than  would  Sophocles  and  Ovid 
have  given  us  their  story  of  Philomela. 

Ihe  cup  of  Nestor  mentioned  above  is 
as  has  already  been  seen  in  the  course  of 
this  chapter,  a  most  unmistakable  case  of 
pre-Homeric  writing. 

Lasdy,  take  Demodocus  ("Odyss,,"  viii , 
472-489).  He  sat  in  the  midst  of  the 
banqueters,  and  ate  of  the  best,  both  of 
wine  and  meat.  And  when  the  banquet 
was  over,  Ulysses,  having  previously  heard 


362      The  Complete  Life  of  Horner. 

him  sing  and  play  his  ''  Story  of  Mars  and 
Venus,"  compHments  him  very  highly,  not 
on  that,  but  on  his  ''  Story  of  the  Doom 
of  the  Achceans,"  which  Homer  has  given 
us  nowhere,  and  requests  a  third  specimen 
of  his  powers, — subject,  "  The  Wooden 
Horse."  Demodocus,  gratified  with  the 
courteous  hospitality  of  his  Princes  guest, 
starting  up,  lyre  in  hand, — 

'*  Began  with  heaven,  and  then  displayed  his  lay." 

And  this  is  just  what  all  the  Rhapsodes 
did,  as  the  reader  will  see  by  looking  at  any 
of  the  shorter  hymns.  They  sang  a  little 
prelusory  hymn,  and  then  fitted  the  piece 
they  were  going  to  sing  on  to  their  wand, 
set  it  before  them,  and  began  to  sing.  1 
mean,  if  it  were  a  new  one,  not  otherwise. 
Say,  for  instance,  there  were  grand  recita- 
tions at  Windsor.  One  would  recite  Tenny- 
son, another  Macaulay,  another  Browning, 
others  ''  Brutus  and  Cassius,"  or  ''  Hubert 
and  Prince  Arthur,"  and  so  on,  all  without 
book  ;  but  the  lion  of  the  evening,  under 
especial  orders  from  Her  Royal  Majesty 
the  Empress-Queen  to  sing  ''  that  sweet 
new  piece  of  his,"  what  would  he  do.-*  Start 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer.     -^(.^^ 

up  from  his  chair,  perform  a  little  courtier- 
hke  kootoomg  and  salaaming,  and  then 
with  much  parade,  produce  the  piece  in 
question,  written  in  his  very  best  hand. 
This  is  what  Homer  did,  e.g,^  ^'Sittino- 
m  the  shop,  many  being  present,  he 
showed  them  his  poetry,— '  The  Ride 
of  Amphiaraus,'  &c."  *  And  again,  -  But 
he  himself  having  written  each  rhapsody 
with  his  own  hand,  and  having  exhibited 

}'rf  V  K  Z^"'!^^''''^  ^'^^  ^'^y  ^^  ^ity,  he 
left  It  behind  him  where  he  slept,  to  pay 

for  his  keep."  f    And  how  came  Ulysses  to 

commend  so  warmly  a  piece  he  had  never 

heard  .?  Why,  because  he  had  done  more, 

-he  had  read  it.     Return  we  to  Windsor. 

When  the  lion  of  the  evening  had  done,  and 

Her  Most  Gracious  Majesty  had  smilinaly 

expressed  her  approbation,  and  the  ba?ds 

around    whilst  bursting  with  secret  envy 

affected  to  be  hardly  able  to  control  their 

ecstatic  rapture,  would  not  the  happy  one, 

bowing  to  the  ground,  lay  down  his  piece 

at  the  Regina-imperatricial  feet,  and  back 

out  of  the  presence  '>    Of  course  he  would  • 

and    even   so    Demodocus    had   left   the 

♦  The  "  Lives,"  p.  5.  f  Reference  mislaid. 


64     T/ie  Complete  Life  of  Homer, 


MSS.  of  his  last  new  piece,  "  The  Doom 
of  the  Acheeans,"  at  the  feet  of  Alcinous. 
And  Alcinous  had  shown  it  to  his  guest, 
and  he  had  read  and  admired  it. 

I  have  not  noticed  any  references  to 
reading  or  writing  in  the  hymns,  but 
the  *' Batrachomyomachia"  contains  one 
unmistakable  recognition  of  the  fact  that 
Homer  wrote  his  poems  : — 

"  With  you  I  began,  oh,  sweet  quire  of  the  Muses, 
Oh,  come  to  my  bosom,  and  help  with  the  lay 
Which  late  writ  on  my  tablets  I  placed  on  your 
knees." 

The  classical  reader  will  not  forget 
Juvenal's, — 

"  Propter  quce  fas  est  genua  incerare  deoriim  ;  " 

and  Homer's  own, — 

"  These  things  lie  on  the  knees  of  the  gods,"  ♦ 
which  Quintus  Smyrnseus  amplifies  into, — 

"  These  things  are  fasten'd  upon  the  knees  of  the 
immortals."  t 


*  Odyss.,  xvii.  514,  and  elsewhere, 
t  Posthomerica. 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer.    365 

Note  the   difference   between    "lie"   and 
'^are  fastened,"  the  difference  between  the 
petitions  on  the  thin  inner  skins  of  goats 
m  the  time  of  Hecuba,  and  the  "delti "  in- 
scribed with,  say,  -  Our  daughter  is  dyin^  • 
Oh,  Jove,  hear  us,"— the  flags  of  distress,' 
the  votive  tablets  fastened  on  the  knees  of 
the  gods  as  they  sat.   -  Gifts  please  all,  both 
gods  and  saints,  and  men  and  children  " 
say  the  poets,  from  Homer  to  Horace  and 
Ovid,— whether  hecatombs,   or  robes,  or 
masses,   or  candles,  or  ribbons,  or  toffee, 
It  is  all  one.     This  bargaining  with  the 
gods  has  prevailed  in  all  ages  and  in  all 
countries,  even  till  now.      Homer  gives  us 
the  first  example  where  he  tells  us  of  the 
Trojan  ladies  laying  a  fine  new  robe  upon 
the  knees  of  Athene.     Of  course,  a  note 
written  on  the  best  goat-skin  was  inserted 
in  the  pocket  of  the  vestment.     And  so  of 
other   cases.     The  poet   has    written   his 
rough  slate  copy  (not  his  final  copy  for  the 
publisher,  mind!)  on    the  waxed  wooden 
tablets  (mentioned  by  Herodotus):  he  now 
entreats  the  Muses  to  help  him  to  get  them 
up  by  heart,  and  spread  them  in  the  ears 
of  all  speech-gifted  men. 

Lastly,  there  are  two  mentions  of  writing 


66     The  Complete  Life  of  Homer. 


in  the  ''  Epigrams,"  one  most  unmistakable 
in  ''  The  Epitaph  on  the  Tomb  of  Midas," 
one  inferential  in  "  The  Fisher-lads." 

Homer  has  never  once  lost  the  oppor- 
tunity of  alluding  to  writing  where  he  could 
do  so  without  gross  impropriety.  But  he  had 
been  no  true  poet  had  he  given  us  letter- 
carriers  going  from  tent  to  tent,  and  heroes 
that  perhaps  could  hardly  read,  puzzling 
out  moss-grown  inscriptions  on  ruined 
tombs  in  a  foreign  dialect.  And  recollect, 
a  Greek  buried  in  a  foreign  land  could 
have  no  ''sema."  As  the  poet  says,  ''We 
carved  not  a  line."  As  we  see  both  in 
the  "  Choephora^ "  of  ^^schylus,  and  the 
*' Iliad"  of  Homer,  they  were  burnt,  and 
their  ashes,  when  opportunity  offered, 
conveyed  home  to  their  friends. 

Even  so  he  never  once  mentions  books, 
because  there  were  no  books  in  the  time 
of  the  Trojan  war,  and  therefore  to  have 
spoken  of  them  would  have  been  an  out- 
rageous anachronism.  But  only  mark  the 
unreasonable  reasoning  of  the  Wolfians. 
''  He  mentions  neither  reading,  nor  letters, 
nor  writing  ;  therefore  he  did  not  write." 
"In  the  Batrachomyomachia  he  mentions 
writing   and   writing  tablets  most  unmis- 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer.    2,67 

^x\^^^J  '  therefore  that  work  is  not  his  '^ 
Also  he  ^^^^  mention  reading,  letters,  and 
writmg,  only  m  language  both  more  forcible 
and   poetical    than   ordinary.     But  -Aris 
tophanes  first  uses  the  word  anagnonai  in 

to?h!fw  if  "^^t"^'  ^^^r^iore.  According 
to  the  Wolfians,  there  was  no  writing  before 
him,  and  Erinna,  Herodotus,  and  the  Tra- 
gedians  are  plainly  spurious,  for  they  all 
most  unmistakably  speak  of  writing 

"  But  he  speaks  neither  of  money  nor  of 
maps.  No,  noryet  of  printing  or  etching. 
Certainly  money  was  only  first  coined 
shortly  before  his  time,  and  maps  were  not 
engraved  til  long  after  his  time.  Why 
then,  should  he  speak  of  them  } 

"But  from  the  significant  phrase,  '  <J^oprot/ 
/xv>3/x^.,  It  clearly  appears  that  merchant 
vessels  sailed  without  invoices."  Indeed  ' 
If  I  say  the  learned  Dr.  Teachwell  knows 
all  the  rules  of  grammar  by  heart,  is  that 
any  proof  that  he  has  not  a  grammar  in 
his  desk  >  And  Homer's  compliment,  that 
the  purser  carried  all  the  cargo  in  his 
memory,  is  just  as  little  proof  that  he  had 
not  an  invoice. 

Now  how  can  all  this  immense  mass  of 
evidence  from  Adam  to  Seth,  from  Seth 


368     The  Complete  Life  of  Homer. 

to    Xisuthrus,     from     Xisuthrus     to    the 
Chaldaean    astronomers,    from    the    Chal- 
dsean    astronomers     to    Abraham,     from 
Abraham   to   the    myth   of    Tritogeneia, 
from  the  myth  of  Tritogeneia  to  Amun 
and  lo,  from  Amun  and    lo  to   Cecrops 
Diphyes,   Cadmus,    Danaus,   and  Moses; 
from    them    to    Pittheus,   Orpheus,    Olen, 
Pamphus,  and  Linus;   from  them  to  the 
Trojan  War;    from    the  Trojan  War  to 
Dictys,     Dares,     Eumolpus,    David,    and 
Solomon;    from    them    to    Homer;    and 
from  Homer  to    Coraebus  ;— how   can  all 
this  stupendous  interconcatenation  of  evi- 
dence   conspire    in    a   gigantic    perjury? 
How  can  all  ancient  myths  from  that  of 
Jupiter   and  Tritogeneia  to    that   of   La- 
tona,   and  from  that  of  the    invention   of 
letters  by  the  Fates  to  that  of  the  birth  of 
Cheiron,    and    from    Prometheus   on    his 
rock  to  the  Golden  Fleece,  and  coundess 
others,  all  referring  to  the  discovery  of  the 
Higher   Speech, — how  can    all   antiquity, 
and   all    modern   times   till    last   century, 
be  thus  egregiously  mistaken  ?     Do  not 
the    countless    various    readings    in    the 
marvellously    multitudinous    pre-Homeric 
stemmas,    only   to   be    explained   by   the 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer.    369 

partial    or  total    obliteration   of  letters  in 
the    inscriptions  from    which    they    were 
drawn,    prove  writing   many  ages   before 
the  time  of  Homer  ?     Does  not  the  infinite 
multitude  of  ancient  monuments  all  over 
Greece,     commemorated     by     Pausanias, 
prove    inscriptions    to    know    which    was 
which  ?     Could  Kensal   Green   Cemetery 
have  been  by  any  possibility  laid  out  by 
a    people    that    could    neither   read    nor 
write  ?       Do    not   the    innumerable    cata- 
logues of  innumerable  names,  from  Acusi- 
laus  to  Apollodorus,  prove  records  ?    Could 
the  immense  multitude  of  facts  that  even 
yet  survive  the  ravages  of  time  in  the  an- 
nals called— falsely  so-called— pre-historic 
of  Greece  have   been  possibly  preserved 
without  writing  ?     Even  the  facts  in  this 
one  book  could  not ;  how  much  less,  then, 
the  facts  in    the   whole,    now,  alas!   cob- 
webbed    and    moth-eaten    library   of  the 
Ptolemies?     Is   the    '^Ye   are    liars   all' 
of    foolish    Leontes   a   fair   reply   to   the 
laborious  investigations, — to  the  passion- 
ate strivings  after  the  truth,— of  so  many 
gifted  children  of  Hellas,  from  Lycurgus 
to    Photius  ?      Is   not  such  ungenerosity 
to  the  dead  a  sign  of  degeneracy  in  the 

2  B 


370     The  Co7nplete  Ltfe  of  Homer. 

living?  Is  not  all  History  worthy  of  the 
name  perishing  from  amongst  us  because 
of  it  ?  Has  it  not  absolutely  robbed  us 
of  the  two  first,  and  incomparably  most 
interesting,  volumes  of  Grecian  history? 

It  is  certain  that  writing  (like  printing, 
chess,  and  other  inventions)  travelled  from 
East    to    West,  —  from    China    with    its 
Tsiang    figure    characters,    invented    by 
Tchang-ki    3000    B.C.,— and     India,    the 
sacred  books  of  which   in    Sanscrit    (the 
Shasters)  were  written  even  earlier  still, 
to  Phoenicia  and   Egypt,  from  thence  to 
Greece,  and  from  thence  to  Italy.     How- 
ever we  may  laugh  at  the  book  of  Enoch  ; 
the  laws  written  on   tables    of  stone  by 
Bak,  the  Arabian  prototype  of  Bacchus  ; 
Adam   writing  love-songs  to  Eve,  at  the 
malign  instigation  of  the  Snake  of  snakes; 
and  Seth  studying  the  mysteries  of  astro- 
nomy ;  still  we  cannot  deny  the  extreme 
antiquity  of  writing,  from  one  end  of  Asia 
to  the  other.     Admitting,  then,  for  argu- 
ment's sake,  that  writing  was  practically 
unknown   in    Europe  before  the  Ols,  all 
the    same    is    it    well-nigh    certain    that 
Homer  wrote  his  "Cycle"  some  centuries 
eariier,   both    by   reason    of  the   greater 


T/ie  Complete  Life  of  Homer,    371 

precocity  of  the  East,  where  he  spent  all 
his  life,  and  also  of  the  greater  facilities  of 
writincr  there. 

Against  all  this  cloud  of  witnesses  the 
Wolfians  can  only  produce  a  Jew  heated 
with    controversy     and    embittered    with 
national    vanity  —  Josephus    contra   Api- 
onem.       "There    was  no   written    poetry 
among  the    Greeks  before   Homer,"   says 
he.     Possibly  not.     *'And  he  appears  to 
have   been   born  after  the   Trojan  War." 
Only  appears  I     What  human  being  ever 
thought  he  was  born  before  ?     ''  And  they 
say  that  even  he  did  not  leave  his  poem 
behind  him  in  writing."     The  mere  hear- 
say of  such  a  witness, — hearsay  that  even 
he    himself,    at   the    height  of  his  anger, 
does  not  attach  credence  to,  but  only  puts 
forth  for  what  it  is  worth  as  an   extreme 
opinion,    not    required    by    his    argument 
—of  what   worth  is  it  ?     Of  such  oii-dits 
the  French  saying  does  indeed  hold  good  : 
''  Les  on-dits  lie  sont  jamais  vrais^'  espe- 
cially as  the  whole  tenour  of  the  passage, 
and  the  middle  clause  particulariy,  shows 
that,  though  so  learned  a  man,  Josephus  is 
here    speaking   on    a   point   of  which    he 
knows  very  little  indeed. 

2  B  2 


372    The  Complete  Lije  of  Homer, 

Grammatology  shows  us  the  great 
antiquity  of  writing.  The  great  letters 
were  undoubtedly  employed  in  ancient 
times  as  the  easiest,  even  as  autotypists 
have  found,  and  village  lads  find  them 
nowadays.  If,  then,  inscription-carving 
came  long  before  ordinary  writing,  the 
small  Greek  letters  should  have  been 
derived  from  the  great  ones,  which  was 
by  no  means  the  case. 

Homer  has  nothing  of  the  air  of  poetr}- 
specially  designed  for  recitation  only,  h 
is  much  more  difficult  to  get  up  by  heart 
or  to  retain  than  "  Nursery  Rhymes,  — 
than    ''Horace,"   or    *' Juvenal,"    or   even 

than  "  Virgil." 

The  strange  and  sudden  change  that 
converted  the  unsubstantial  fairyland  ot 
Mythology  into  the  solid  ground  of  real 
History  after  the  labours  of  Hercules,— a 
change  caused  doubtless  by  the  potent 
influence  of  the  learned  Court  of  Trcezene. 
—proves  that  the  art  of  writing  was  now 
becoming  well  known.  And  the  fact  that 
from  this  time  we  have  many  exact  dates 
and  minute  particulars  utterly  beyond  the 
toothless  gums  of  unwritten  tradition, 
tends  to  prove  the  same  thing. 


The  Complete  Life  of  Home7\    373 

Etymology,  too,  is  on  our  side  against 
the  Wolfians.  Every  known  language 
confirms  the  obvious  view  that  the  leaves 
of  trees  were  the  first  writing-material. 
The  English  leaf  the  French  feuille,  the 
Italian  folio,  and  the  double  meaning  of 
liber,  and  the  various  meanings  of  the 
Greco-Latin  lego, — (1)  gather,  (2)  say,  (3) 
read, — give  us  a  brief  epitome  of  the  whole 
history  of  leaf-writing. 

A  book  in  those  days  must  have  been 
a  mean,  untidy  thing  to  look  at ;  some- 
thing like  the  nest  of  a  caddis-worm, 
and  a  wonderful  contrast  to  the  splendid 
morocco  -  bound,  richly  -  gilded,  scarlet- 
margined,  gorgeously-illustrated  Mitions 
lie  luxe  of  the  present  day.  But  from 
such  small  beginnings  all  great  things 
spring.  Rome  was  once  a  few  shepherds' 
cottages  ;  Liverpool  a  few  fishermen's 
huts.  And  they  must  have  a  strangely- 
mean  idea  of  the  poetic  nature  who  think 
it  can  be  precluded  from  pouring  forth  its 
conceptions  into  the  ear  of  eternal  memory 
by  such  petty  obstacles.  Shall  natural 
instinct  teach  every  idle  urchin  to  be- 
scribble  every  school-desk,  every  wall, 
every  bridge  he  has  access  to  ;  every  love- 


74    T/ie  CompLctc  Life  of  Hovicr, 


sick  youth,  from  Paris  to  Medoro,  to  fill 
wood  and  erove  with  the  name  of  his  fair 
Amaryllis ;  and  shall  not  the  superhuman 
instinct  of  genius  teach   a    Homer  what 
trees  are  good   for  ?     This   is  indeed  to 
degrade  the  poet  much  below  the  female 
butterfly.       Cicero's    letters,    written    on 
wood  a  thousand  years  after  Homer,  fill 
several  volumes.     There  was  at  Thebes, 
in  the  time  of  Pausanias,  a  leaden  edition 
de  hixe  of  the  great  national  poet.     This 
has  been  insolently  jeered  at  by  Wolf,  but 
we  read  in  Suidas  that  the  ancients  used 
formerly  to  write  on  plates  of  lead  called 
*'  elasmoi."     For  pencil  and  paper  to  note 
down  their  first  rough  ideas,  the  Horaces 
of  old  used    chalk   and   wall.     Venantius 
tells   us   how  the   barbaric  runes  of  our 
ancestors  were  painted  on  wooden  tablets 
of  boc  (beech-tree).*     As  early  as  872^ 
"boc"  meant  a  written  document ;  what  it 
means   now,    we   all  know.      And   when 
Homer    the    younger    recited   his    great 
Masters  celebrated   "Hymn  to  Apollo" 
at    Delos,  —  i,c.,    about    882    B.C.,  —  the 
Delians    wrote    the    verses    down    on    a 

*  So    probably  were  the   Pelasgic  runes  ;    hence 
*'  grapho  "  originally  meant,  "  I  paint." 


^  The  Complete  Life  of  Homer,     375 

tablet  whitened  with  gypsum,   and   dedi- 
cated it  in  the  temple  of  Artemis.     But 
whether  Homer  himself  wrote  his  works 
on  papyrus  obtained  during  his   sojourn 
in  Egypt,  or  on  sheep-skin, — so  commonly 
used  for  writing  in  Eastern  Asia  (where 
he   was    born,   and    where    he   spent   the 
whole  of  his  dreary  life),  that  in  Cyprus  a 
schoolmaster  was  actually  called  a  sheep- 
skin-dauber,— or    on    philyra,    I    do    not 
know ;  but  that  he  wrote  them  on  some- 
thing, I  do  know.     Even  the  most   bar- 
barous age  the  world  ever  saw  must  have 
possessed     the     necessary    materials    for 
writing, — something  to  scratch  with,  and 
something    to    scratch    upon, — in    super- 
abundance, whether  leaves,  or    shells,  or 
stones,    or    lead,    or    brass,    or    wooden 
tablets    (whether  whitened   with  gypsum 
or    daubed    with    wax),    or    philyra,     or 
papyrus,    or    sheep-skins,    or   goat-skins. 
And    Homer's   was    no   such   age.     The 
Wolfian    theory   betrays  an  ignorance  of 
the  primary  elements  of  human  nature  the 
most  astounding.     It  supposes  in  one  and 
the  same  man,  and  at  one  and  the  same 
epoch,  the   sublime   genius  of  a   Shake- 
speare   and     the     crass    stupidity    of    a 


376    The  Complete  Life  of  Homer. 

Hottentot.      Homer   7nust   have   written. 
Any  copious  poet  that  has  been   kept  a 
year  or  so  without  pens,  ink,  and  paper, 
as    ill    at   ease    as    an    unmilked    cow  ; 
any   printer   who   knows   how   important 
a  part  the  printing-press  plays  in  clarify- 
ing the  muddle-headed  bard's  ideas  ;  any 
autotypist,  any  actor,  any  physician,  any 
philosopher  knows,   or  should  know,  the 
utter  untenability  of  the  Wolfian  theory. 
From  the  bright-eyed  school-boy  to  the 
grey-haired  clerk,  it  shocks  the  common 
sense    of    all    mankind.       Nature    does 
nothing  in  vain.     Why,  then,  should  she 
bestow    such    amazing    memories   on    us 
poets?     She  is  too  just  to  do  any  such 
thing.     She  reserves  them  for  those  that 
have  no  ideas  of  their  own.     Medwin  tells 
us  that  Byron  knew  all  his  own  poetry  by 
heart;  but  every  author,  from  Newton  to 
Carlyle,  can  tell    a  widely-different   tale. 
Every   author   knows    the   agony   of  re- 
producing a  lost  work.     Whatever  Byron 
may  have   made    Medwin  believe  about 
his     ''  Deformed     Transformed,"    he    no 
doubt   threw   it   on    the   fire,    but   either 
quietly  took  it  off  again  or  had  a  rough 
copy  of  it.     Every  author  knows  that  to 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer,    2>71 

•deprive  us  of  pens,  ink,  and  paper  is  to 
limit  us  to  slight  effusions.  But  when 
you  come  to  actual  cases,  how  miserably 
you  break  down.  What  about  Ossian  ? 
Did  not  that  prove  an  arrant  fraud  }  The 
works  of  Orpheus,  Linus,  and  Olen, — 
what  of  them  }  The  whole  sum  of  our 
traditional  unwritten  literature, — nursery 
rhymes,  popular  songs,  proverbs,  and 
riddles, — how  very  small  a  volume  they 
would  make ! 

*'  But  many  rhapsodists  and  others 
knew  the  whole  'Iliad'  and  'Odyssey' 
by  heart."  Even  if  they  did,  it  proves 
nothing.  It  does  not  touch  the  main 
difficulty.  But  did  they }  They  may 
have  got  up  every  book  at  one  time  or 
another,  but  not  at  the  same  time.  And 
this  is  exactly  what  happened.  One 
reciter  knew  up  such  and  such  books,  and 
another  such  and  such  ;  but  none  of  them 
knew  all  of  them.  But  even  if  they  did, 
as  I  have  just  said,  it  proves  nothing.  A 
clever  rhapsodist  having  nothing  else  to 
do  is  one  thing;  a  poet  with  a  brain 
crowded  with  all  the  learning  of  the  real, 
and  the  fancy  of  the  ideal  world,  is  quite 
another. 


37^     The  Co7)2plete  Life  of  Homer, 

Nor  should  I  even  imasflne  that  Homer 
would  have  found  any  insuperable  diffi- 
culty in  obtaining  a  sufficient  number  of 
sheep-skins  and  goat-skins  for  his  one 
author's  copy  of  his  works,  if  nothing  else 
would  serve.  What  with  singing  at  the 
temples,  where  sheep-skins  and  goat-skins 
must  have  been  so  dirt  cheap,  and  reciting 
.at  the  luxurious  private  mansions  of  the 
Phaeacians  of  Chios  (if  we  may  judge  by 
his  own  words  in  the  *'  Odyssey,"  where 
he  speaks  of  the  multitude  of  sheep  and 
goats  killed  for  culinary  purposes),  he 
would  probably  have  carried  off,  as  his 
legitimate  poet's  perquisite,  as  long  as  he 
only  gave  satisfaction,  a  plentiful  supply 
of  bare,  wool-less  hides. 

Without  writing,  Homer,  alike  with  or 
without  eyes,  would  have  been  blind  all 
his  life, — a  blind  man  in  a  dream.  A 
Demosthenes  cannot  orate  with  his  mouth 
full  of  pebbles,  and  a  Homer  cannot 
versify  with  a  load  of  thirteen  poems  upon 
his  brain.  Could  Homer  have  remem- 
bered,— I  mean  could  he  have  kept  con- 
tinually in  his  brain, — even  the  twenty 
thousand  lines  of  his  "Iliad"  alone  .'^ 
Impossible  !     The  ''  Iliad  "  might  possibly 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homej-.    379 

have  been  got  up  by  heart;   it  could  not 
possibly  have  been  co7nposed  by  one  man 
without  the  help  of  writing.     Still  less  the 
"  Odyssey  "  and  the  other  poems  we  may 
feel  sure  Homer  wrote,  even  if  we  were 
not  told  he  did.      For,  given  a  Homer, — 
just    as    Voltaire    has    written    nearly   a 
hundred  volumes,  and  Cicero  and  Lopez 
de   Vega  so  many,— he  must  have  com- 
posed   many  myriads  of  lines   in  a  style 
so  simple  and  easy.     For,  simplicity  and 
ease,— though  possibly  acquired  with  diffi- 
culty,— when  acquired,  imply  copiousness. 
A    certain    philosopher,    whilst   gazing 
intently  upon  the  stars  as  he  walked  along^ 
fell   into  a  ditch.     Even  so  it  fares  widi 
the  credulous  incredulity,— the   i7isanie7ts 
sapientia  of  modern  pseudo-criticism.     It 
marvels  at  the  ruins  of  Tiryns,  the  tunnels, 
of  Copais,  the  sculptured  lions  of  Mycenae, 
and  yet  cannot  believe  that  Homer  in  all 
his  travels  could  have  found  the  materials 
for  one  poor  copy  of  his  immortal  poems. 
It  believes   that  tradition    handed  down, 
for  there  is  no  saying  how  many  centuries, 
50,000   hexameters   at   the  very   least  (I 
believe  five  or  six  times  that  quantity)  ;  it 
utterly  discredits   its   handing   down    the 


380     The  Complete  Life  of  Ho7iier. 

merest  outline  of  the  lives  of  the  mighty 
heroes  to  whom  the  said  hexameters  owe 
their  birth.     "  But  Homer  says    nothing 
about  it/'     So  he  says  nothing  of  Orpheus, 
nothing  of  Musseus,  nothing  of  Palamedes, 
nothing   of    Smyrna    and     los,    next    to 
nothing    of  Bacchus,   Hercules,  Theseus, 
Thebes,  Argo,  nothing  of  the  Ionic  emigra- 
tion, the  Dorians,  or  the  Amazons.  In  other 
words,  nothing  of  what  did  not  concern  his 
hearers,  nothing  that  did  not  fall  naturally 
into  his  poem,  nothing  that  from  pride  of 
race  he  did  not  choose  to  speak  of.     He 
had  a  fine  organ  of  secretiveness.     It  is 
probable   enough    that    not   many  of  the 
William  Deloraines  on   either  side  could 
either  read   or   write  ;    and,  even  if  they 
could  ever  so  clerklily,  he  does  well  to  say 
nothing  about  it.     How  little  does  Shake- 
speare say  of  reading  and  writing  in  his 
*'HenryVI."  and ''Richard  III."  He  knew 
the  barbarising  effects  of  a  war  that  ab- 
sorbs all  a  nation's  energies.     And  so  did 
Homer.     Even  his  sagacious  Ulysses  is 
.affected  by  them  as  seen  by  his  outrageous 
treatment  of  the  suitors.      Literature  was 
beginning   to   bud  here    in   Chaucer  and 
'Gower.     The  Wars  of  the  Roses  blighted 


The  Complete  Life  of  Hojuer.    3S1 

it  for  two  whole  centuries.  Literature  was. 
beginning  to  bud  in  Greece,  in  Orpheus, 
01en,and  Linus.  The  Trojan  war  blighted  it 
for  about  an  equal  period.  The  Wars  of  the 
Roses  produced  Richard  III.;  the  Trojan 
War,  Neoptolemus.  "  The  traditions  lack 
documentary  evidence."  But  they  have 
all  the  evidence  that  from  the  nature  of 
the  case  they  can  have.  Let  us  be  con- 
tent with  that.  Even  the  evidences  of 
that,  of  which  as  being  of  the  most  supreme 
importance,  both  here  and  hereafter  to  us 
all,  we  are  fairly  entitled  to  demand  such 
proof  as  may  satisfy  all  but  wilful  incre- 
dulity,— even  the  evidences  of  Christianity 
do  not  force  belief.  Why,  then,  expect 
our  belief  to  be  forced  in  a  matter  of  mere 
otiose  opinion  ?  We  of  the  present  day 
treat  them  of  the  olden  time  as  the  foolish 
irreverent  son  treats  his  aged  father's 
prophetic  experience  but  failing  memory ; 
but,  believe  me,  in  religion,  in  history,  in 
everything,  the  scepticisin  of  a  fool  is  even 
worse  than  his  superstition.  And  as  all 
other  faults  punish  themselves,  so  does 
this.  He  that  is  deaf  as  an  adder  to  the 
most  cogent  proofs,  is  fooled  by  his  own 
chimeras.     "It  was  all  recitation;  there 


382     The  Complete  Life  of  Horner. 

was  no  reading  public  till  long  after 
Homer."  Doubtless,  scarcely  any  one  but 
the  poet  himself  and  his  rhapsodists  could 
either  read  or  write  in  the  days  of  the 
Cyclic  poets,  just  as  in  the  theatre  now, 
only  the  manager  and  his  taster,  the  poet 
and  the  company  have  read  the  play. 
Doubtless,  there  were  very  few  copies  of 
the  ''  Iliad"  in  the  days  of  Homer,  possi- 
bly only  one,  just  as  there  was  only  one 
copy  of  the  "Law"  in  the  days  of 
Josiah.  But  there  was  one  copy  we 
know  which  Homer  bequeathed  to  Creo- 
phylus  on  his  death  -  bed,  and  which 
Lycurgus  afterwards  found  in  the  posses- 
sion of  the  posterity  of  Creophylus.  ''  And 
he  eagerly  caused  it  to  be  copied  out  for 
him,  and  made  a  complete  collection  of  the 
several  parts  of  it,  with  the  view  of  bring- 
ing it  hither  [to  European  Greece].  For 
there  was  already  a  certain  dim  celebrity 
of  the  poem  amongst  the  Greeks;  but  not 
many  had  copies  of  the  whole,  but  certain 
portions  were  carried  different  ways,  some 
hither,  some  thither,  as  chance  directed. 
But  Lycurgus  was  the  first  that  made  it 
generally  known,"  *  by  bringing  it  into 
*  Plut.,  ''  Lycurg.,"  p.  Z2,    (Triibner.) 


The  Complete  Life  of  Hojuer.    38 


Europe  **in  complete  form  (aSpoa)."* 
"But  'he  wrote  it'  (sypavf/aro),  merely 
means  he  took  home  with  him  some  rhap- 
sodes who  knew  it  by  heart."  (Merely  that; 
what  a  probable  interpretation,  to  be  sure  !) 
'*  It  is  a  known  fact  that  his  laws  were  un- 
written." t  Quite  so,  I  can  imagine  many 
good  reasons  for  his  not  choosing  to 
commit  his  simple  code  to  writing.  But 
the  poems  of  Homer  were  a  very  different 
matter  ;  and  the  mere  fact  of  his  forbidding 
his  laws  to  be  written  shows  that  writing 
was  common  in  his  day.  The  fact,  there- 
fore, that  his  laws  were  unwritten,  lends  no 
support  whatever  to  a  misinterpretation 
more  outrageous  than  the  most  laughable 
of  Squire  Peter's  in  Swift's  "Tale  of  aTub." 
And  why  call  them  in  particular  Rhetra, 
if  all  laws  in  his  day  were  so  } 

Well,  Homeric  literature  down  to 
Solon's  day,  was  in  a  state  of  constant  ebb 
and  flow,  and — just  as  the  Pentateuch  was, 
humanly  speaking,  on  the  verge  of  being 
lost  in  the  days  of  Josiah  ;  just  as  the  ex- 
piring light  of  writing  had  to  be  perpetually 
restored  between  the  days  of  the  Flood 
and  those  of  Palamedes,  and  between  the 
*  .Elian.  t  Wolf,  "  Proleg." 


I 


384     The  Co7nplete  Life  of  Homer. 

days  of  Palamedes  and  those  of  Homer  ;: 
just  as  numerous  remains  of  antiquity, 
even  after  the  full  establishment  of  writing, 
have  hardly  escaped  destruction  by  a  single 
copy — even  so,  from  Creophylus  to  Peisis- 
tratus,  the  works  of  Homer  were  with  the 
utmost  difficulty  preserved  by  the  efforts 
of  rhapsodes  innumerable  and  successive 
copyists  and  collectors,  even  as  Diomedes 
the  Scholiast  on  Dionysius  the  Thracian 
says  : — 

*'  Once  upon  a  time,  the  poems  of  Homer 
had  perished,  either  by  fire  (the  temple  of 
Delphi  was  destroyed  by  fire,  548  B.C.),  or 
by  earthquake  (Sparta  was  convulsed  by 
an  earthquake,  464  B.C.),  or  by  inundation 
(may  not  this  refer  to  the  immeasurably 
most  important  of  all,  the  Creophylian 
copy  in  the  hand- writing  of  the  poet  ?) ;  and 
the  books  having  been  scattered  about  in 
different  directions,  some  this  way,  and 
some  that  way,  and  lost  at  last,  one  was 
found  having,  perhaps,  a  hundred  lines  of 
**  Homer,"  and  another  two  hundred,  and 
another  a  thousand,  and  another  as  many 
as  luck  would  have  it,  and  the  marvel  of 
ages  was  on  the  point  of  being  consigned 
to  oblivion.     But  Peisistratus  devised  the 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer,     385 

following  plan :  he  sent  criers  all  over 
Greece,  requesting  that  he  that  had  any 
of  Homer's  verses  should  bring  them  to 
him  at  a  fixed  price  per  line.  And  when 
he  had  got  them  all,  he  summoned  seventy 
choice  and  learned  grammarians  to  put 
them  together,  each  arranging  them  apart 
from  the  rest,  as  seemed  best  to  him. 
And  when  they  had  done,  they  all  declared 
unanimously  .  .   .  ." 

The  obvious  fable  based  on  that  of  the 
Septuagint ;  the  copies  destroyed  by  fire, 
earth,  and  water  ;  the  awful  blunder  about 
the  date  of  the  earthquake  at  Sparta,  which 
the  Scholiast  evidently  believes  happened 
in  the  second  Messenian  War ;  the  garbled 
plagiarism  from  Plutarch;  the  obvious 
rechauffe  from  divers  Gospel  parables ;  the 
ridiculously  small  scraps  that  the  less  for- 
tunate Rhapsodes  had,  and  seventy  copies 
of  40,000  lines  each  produced  instanter, 
and  seventy  first-class  grammarians  in  one 
city  that  the  day  before  had  not  a  single 
copy,  all  tend  to  discredit  the  above 
account.  The  account  of  -^lian  is  much 
more  accurate  :  ''  Peisistratus  collected  and 
published  the  '  Iliad  '  and  the  '  Odyssey  ' ; 
and  that  of  Suidas  :  *' Homer  was  compiled 

2  c 


I  "» 


386     T/te  Complete  Life  of  Homer. 

and  arranged  by  many,  and  especially  by 
Peisistratus."  *     The — 

"  I  did  collect  the  tale  of  yore, 
That  was  sung  scatteredly  before," — 

of  the  Greek  epigrammatist,  is  mere  Court- 
poet's  humbug.  Cicero's  guarded  state- 
ment, "  disposuisse  confusos  antea  dicitur," 
I  do  not  dispute.  Even  as  we  read  in 
the  "Anecdota":  "It  is  said  that  the 
poems  of  Homer  were  stitched  together 
by  Peisistratus,  and  put  in  order,  which 
before  were  read  scatteredly,  and  as  chance 
would  have  it,  owing  to  their  correct 
arrangement  having  been  wrenched  asunder 
by  the  lapse  of  time "  ;  up  to  the  time  of 
Psammetichus  (671-617  B.C.)  on  the  pre- 
pared inner  bark  of  the  linden-tree,  and 
after  that  time  on  papyrus,  the  minstrels 
attached  (hence  they  were  called  "rapsodoi," 
stitch-songs)  to  the  laurel  wand  sacred  to 
their  tutelary  deity,  and  called  rabdos= 
rabodos.t  that  on  which  the  lay  was  sewn. 
Hence  Pindar  speaks  of  the  "  Homerid 
minstrels  of  stitcht-on  lays  {  "  ;  and  Calli- 

*  VVestermann's  "  Lives,"  p.  28. 
t  From  rah,  root  of  obsolete  2  aor.  of  raJ>lo,  "  I 
stitch."  X  N.  2.  2. 


T/ie  Complete  Life  of  Homer.     ^^%i 

machus  says,   "And  the  lay  woven  on  my 
wand,  I  smg  contmually,  even  as  I  received 

It.  And  Hesiod  says,  "Having  stitched 

mmstrelsy  on  to  new  hymns."  And  Pausa 
niassays  it  was  held  on  the  lapf  like  a  roll 
of  music  now-a-days.  And  we  learn  from 
Homer  that  It  was  "stitcht  on"  to  the 
rabdos  just  like  a  wall  map  to  the  roller  t 
And  Lycurgus  tells  the  Athenians,  in  one 

•^  iVf"°?'  "^""^   'h^''-  ancestors  pro- 
vided by  law  for  the  recitation  of  Homer's 

(B.C  685).  And  later  still,  Solon  ordained 
by  law  that  they  should  be  recited  by  suc- 

the  other  left  off,  according  as  ivas  pre- 
scribed by  the  iMaster  of  the  Ceremonies,? 
exactly  as  Callimachus  says.  ^ 

If,  in  spite  of  all  this,  Homer  was  still 
on  the  point  of  being  lost,  this  says 
volumes  on  the  impossibility  of  his  poems 
being  preserved  by  oral  tradition  during 
the  three  or  four  preceding  dark  centuries 
furthermore,  it  appears,  even  from  the 
Scholiast  on  Dionysius  Thrax,  that  lona 
before  the  age  of  Peisistratus  there  had 

•  Call.  ;'Fr.,"  ,38.  t  Paus.,  ix.  30,  §  3. 

X  II.,  xii.  294-297.  §  Diog.  Laert. 

2    C    2 


388     The  Complete  Life  of  Homer. 


been  various  copies  of  the  works  of 
Homer,  viz.,  that  of  Homer  himself,  be- 
queathed to  Creophylus  about  955  B.C.  ; 
that  of  Lycurgus,  about  870  B.C.  ;  that  of 
the  Homeridae  at  Chios,  and  others  ;  but 
that  they  had  been  lost  by  various  casual- 
ties, and  that  the  books  of  Homer  were 
now  only  to  be  found  scattered  about 
hither  and  thither.  This  would  be,  to  a 
certain  extent,  the  natural  result  of  sparse, 
perhaps  no  reading,  and  incessant  recita- 
tions. Each  ''aoidos"  would  take  his  por- 
tion away,  and  in  time  there  would  not  be  a 
complete  copy  left.  Of  course,  the  Scho- 
liast's account  is  much  exaggerated.  The 
notion  of  one  minstrel  having  a  whole 
book  or  more,  and  another  barely  a  rhab- 
dosful,  is  simply  ludicrous.  Still,  no  doubt, 
a  recension  worthy  of  the  literary  metro- 
polis of  Greece  was  now  highly  necessary. 
Cicero's  guarded  expression  implies  no 
more.  And  Suidas's,  whilst  identical  in 
expression  with  the  rest,  contains  an  addi- 
tional phrase  that  tells  us  exacdy  what  all 
this  collation,  this  putting  together,  this 
collecting  into  one  whole  the  confused  and 
scattered  disject i  membra  poetce  means. 
"  Homer  was  compiled  and  arranged  by 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer,    389 

many,  and  especially  by  Peisistratus."   Just 
so.     There  was  the   Recension  of  i\rgos, 
the  Recension  of  Crete,  the  Recension  of 
Chios,  the  Recension  of  Cyprus,  and  how 
many  more  I  cannot  say,  and,  lastly,  the 
Recension  of  Athens.     That   Peisistratus 
did  more  than  this,  we  have  not  a  shadow 
of  argument  against  the  Atlas  of  proof  the 
other  way.    That  what  he  did  was  nothing 
unique   appears    from    the   fact   that   the 
Alexandrine  critics  do  not  even  notice  the 
Peisistratus   Recension  among  the  many 
before  them.     They  name  especially  other 
MSS.   (of  Chios,   Massilia,   Sinope,  &c.), 
but  not  the  MS.  of  MSS.     Furthermore, 
Plato  tells  us  that  ''  Hipparchus  was  the 
first  that  brought  the  poems  of  Homer 
into  Attica."  (Whatever,  then,  becomes  of 
the  claims  of  Peisistratus  ?)     ''And  com- 
pelled the  Rhapsodes  to  go  through  them 
in  order,  one  after  the  other,  at  the  Pana- 
thenaea."     In  other  words,  to  do  as  had 
been  already  twice  enacted  in  the  time  of 
Solon  and  Tyrtaeus  before  him,  exactly  as 
if  Peisistratus  had  never  existed.      Lastly, 
neither  the  Parian  Chronicle  nor  Eusebius 
says  one  word  touching  this  most  impor- 
tant matter.     Neither,  I  venture  to  guess, 


1 


90     The  Complete  Life  of  Hofuer, 


did  Syncellus,  or  any  of  the  universal 
historians,  from  Josephus  and  Zonaras  to 
the  Byzantines — Cedrenus,  Melala,  and 
Glycas.  And,  indeed,  if  we  reHect  that, 
in  the  time  of  Peisistratus,  the  stupendous 
Cydic  series  was  complete, — plus  the 
thirteen  works  of  Homer,  plus  the  sixteen 
of  Hesiod,  plus  the  Orphic  Cycle,  plus 
lyric  poems  innumerable,  with  Egypt  and 
its  papyrus  beds  now  thrown  freely  open, 
and  literature  a  regular  source  of  subsis- 
tence to  a  distinct  profession,  the  same  as 
now,* — is  it  possible  to  conceive  that  there 
were  no  MSS  ? 

Doubtless  Solon,  Peisistratus,  and  Hip- 
parchus  all  did  something.  Solon  provided 
for  regular  recitations  of  our  poet's  works 
from  a  certain  number  of  copies,  complete 
enough  originally,  no  doubt,  but  split  up 
amongst  the  Rhapsodes  just  as  my  MS. 
work  is  amongst  the  printers,  my  MS.  play 
amongst  the  actors.  Peisistratus  collated 
it  as  others  did,  elsewhere  if  not  at  Athens 
itself,  before  and  after  him.  And  Hip- 
parchus  brought  to  Athens  from  abroad  a 
true  and  genuine  first-proof  copy.  How 
small  a  matter  all  this  is,  appears  from  this 

*  "  Anth.  Lyr."  (Bergk.),  p.  17,  C.C.  43-82. 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer.    391 

one  consideration.  Naumachus  collected 
the  laws  of  Solon  just  as  Peisistratus  col- 
lected the  works  of  Homer,  yet  no  one 
doubts  that  Solon  wrote  his  laws. 

Obviously  Wolf  collapses  entirely.  He 
does  not  prove  his  point  in  the  least,  and, 
even  if  he  did,  even  if  there  were  no 
copies  of  Homer  at  Athens  in  the  time  of 
Peisistratus,  what  argument  is  that  that 
there  were  copies  nowhere  else,  especially 
in  Ionia,  the  sacred  cradle  of  the  *'  Cycle" 
and  the  region  where  writing  was  com- 
monest ? 

As  to  the  Kochlys  and  the  Lachmans, 
that  would  split  the  "Iliad"  into  twenty 
songs,  just  as  the  monk  in  **  Ingoldsby 
Legends"  splits  up  one  broomstick  into 
twenty  broomsticks,  one  devil  into  twenty 
devils,  which  of  the  two  is  the  greater 
wonder,  that  if  Arctinus  wrote  a  contin- 
uous poem  of  10,000  lines.  Homer  should 
write  one  of  30,000 ;  or  that  instead  of 
one  marvel  of  nature,  one  Homer,  one 
sun,  we  should  have  twenty  marvels, 
twenty  Homers,  and  twenty  suns  ? 


CHAPTER      IX. 


THE    PSEUDO-HOMER. 

There  were  many  distinct  Homers  ;  this 
IS  an  admitted  fact.  Xenophon,  in  his 
book,  ''  De  Equivocis,"  says  there  were 
several  ;*  the  pseudo-Archilochus  counts 
eight  ;t  Procl us  counts  three; J  all  differ- 
ent from  Archilochus's,  and  says  there 
were  many  more  who  took  the  name  out 
of  admiration  of  the  original  Homer. 
But  especially  there  were  two  :  (i)  Homer, 
the  son  of  Euphron,  (2)  Homer,  the  son 
of  Kretheis.  So  there  were  two  The- 
seuses,  three  ^thras,  and  two  Phalarises, 
to  the  sore  confusion  of  the  phil-Homerist, 
the  mythologist,  and  the  philologist ;  three 
Kretheuses,  two  Amphions,  three  ^Eoluses, 

*  Allatius,  p.  287.  t  Allatius,  pp.  288,  289. 

J  Westermann's  *'  Lives,"  pp.  47,  48. 


T/ie  Complete  Life  of  Homer,    393 

and  two  Cadmuses.     So  there  were  two 
Ascaniuses,  two  yEneases,  two  Cinyrases, 
two  Musaeuses,   two    Neleuses,    two    Eu- 
ropas, — one  the  ocean  nymph,  from  whom 
Europe    derived    its    name,    and   one  the 
Europa;  three  Atyses,  and  two  or  three 
Mseons.     So  there  were  two  Alcaeuses, — 
the    Alceeus,    and    Alcseus   of    Messene; 
two  Terpanders, — Terpander  of   Phocsea, 
and  the    Terpander ;    two  Archilochuses, 
two    Suidases,     two     Theocrituses,     two 
Agamemnons  ;     two    Stephanuses, — Ste- 
phanus    Byzantius,    and    the    Stephanus ; 
two   Demodocuses, — one  of  Lacedaemon, 
and  one  the  Demodocus  ;  two  Phemiuses, 
— one  Homer  s  more  than  father,  and  one 
Phemius    of    Ithaca;     two    Nonnuses, — 
Nonnus    the   poet,    and    Nonnus    Abbas. 
So  there  were  two   Penelopes, — one  the 
daughter  of  Callisto  and  mother  of  Pan, 
and  one  the  chaste  Penelope,  defamed  by 
her  namesakes    irregularities.      So  there 
were   three   Trophoniuses, — all    the   sons 
of  Erginus,  ix.,  workman  ;  three  Linuses, 
— Linus  the  son  of  Amphimarus,   Linus 
the  son  of  Apollo  and  Calliope,  and  Linus 
the  son  of  Ismenius  ;    two  Tantaluses, — 
one  the  King  of  Egypt,  and  grandson  of 


394      The  Complete  Life  of  Homer. 

Neilus,   and  the  Tantalus ;    two  Typhons, 
— Typhon,     King    of     Egypt,    and     the 
Typhon;    two     Hesiods, — one    the    poet, 
and  one  of  whom  we  know  nothino-  but 
that  he  was  murdered  ;  two  Melissuses,— 
one  the  descendant  of  our  Melissigenes, 
one    an    Athenian    admiral  ;     two    Lycur- 
guses, — ^one  the  lawgiver,  one  the  orator ; 
five  or  six  Pelasguses,  twelve  Herculeses,' 
six  Apollos,  eight  Simonideses,  about  the 
same     number    of    Bacchuses,    and    any 
number  of  Helens  ;  ten   Bions,  all  poets  ; 
four  Theons,  all  philosophers,  besides  four 
Theons,  all  sophists  ;  and  three  poetesses, 
all  rejoicing  in  the  distinguished  cognomen 
of   Fly   {^Mziia),      Manetho   is  a  remark- 
able    name   enough,    yet    there  were  two 
Manethos.      Oreibantius  is  yet  more   re-. 
markable,   yet   there   were   two    Oreiban- 
tiuses.     There  were  even  two  Hyrnethos. 
And  so  on,  and  so  on.     Considering  that 
all   these  names,   or   nearly  all,   occur   in 
this   one   litde    book,    it    may    easily   be 
imagined  that  once  afloat  on  the  limitless 
sea  of  ancient  literature  in  Great  Russell 
Street,  unless  we  take  the  utmost  possible 
care,  the  mistakes  we  make  are  innumer- 
able.    And  all  early   Greek    history   is^a 


The  Co7npIete  Life  of  Homer,    395 

scene  of  the  very  wildest  confusion  if  we 
thus  confuse  Alexander  the  Great  with 
Alexander  the  Coppersmith ;  St.  George 
of  Cappadocia  with  St.  George  of  Eng- 
land ;  Hercules  of  Greece,  that  slew  the 
Hydra,  with  Hercules  the  Tyrian,  whose 
dog  discovered  the  dye  that  gave  him 
that  surname  by  champing  up  a  lump  of 
sea-snails  and  so  dyeing  his  jaws  a 
brilliant  purple ;  lasus,  the  father  of  lo, 
with  lasus,  eighth  king  of  Argos,  or 
either  with  lasus,  our  poet's  grandfather ; 
Endymion,  the  great  ancestor  of  the  ^to- 
lians,  with  Endymion  the  Dreamer, — 

"  That,  waking,  pray'd  to  know  the  name  of  God, 
And  heard  it  in  a  dream,  and  w^oke  no  more ; " 

Keats's  Endymion,  or  either  Endymion 
with  Endymion  Porter  ;  Narcissus,  the 
Erectheid.  that  Epopeus  slew,  with  Nar- 
cissus, the  beautiful  youth  that  Orpheus 
loved  and  was  scorned  by ;  Orpheus's 
Alexis,  in  fact ;  or  either  Narcissus  with 
Narcissus  Luttrell ;  Carey,  the  translator 
of  ''Dante,"  with  Mother  Carey;  Tom 
Jones,  the  foundling,  with  Davey  Jones, 
or  either  Jones  with  the  great  Oriental 
scholar.     All  this  terrible  confusion  arises 


396     The  Complete  Life  of  Homer, 

mainly  from  the  ancient  Greeks  having 
so  to  speak,  only  a  Christian  name  (which 
naturally  kept  on  recurring  in  the  family 
stemma)  and  not  two  or  three  names  as 
we  have,  but  partly  also  because  they  em- 
ployed  certain  very  celebrated  names  gene- 
rically  in  writing  of  the  so-called  pre-his- 
toric  times  before  the  Fall  of  Troy.     Thus 
any  poet  was  called  Orpheus,  any  musician 
Linus,  any  schoolmaster  Cheiron,  any  pro- 
phet Teiresias,  any  knave  Sisyphus,  any 
hero  of  the  Cid  order  Hercules.     So  we 
are  told   that  Minos  drove  Ganymede  to 
suicide  just  as  Demetrius  drove  Democles 
to  avoid  his  unnatural  embraces.     But  the 
Ganymede  of  Minos  is  not///t'  Ganymede, 
but  only  a  beautiful  boy,  name  unknown! 
So  Horace  calls  the  unprincipled  seducer 
of  another  man's  sweetheart  Enipeus,  mean- 
ing,  not  a  reproacher,    as    Naucke   most 
ridiculously  supposes,  but  even,  as  we  say, 
"A  gay  Lothario."     To  confound,    then, 
the    Herculeses,  the    Helens,   the   Deme- 
triuses,  &c.,  is  as  inexcusable  in  Greek  as  it 
is  to  confuse  the  Henrys  in  English,  the 
Ptolemys    in     Egyptian,    the    Louises    in 
French,  the  Philips  in  Spanish,  the  Johns 
m   Papal,  and  the   Charleses  in  universal 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer,     397 

European  history.  In  other  words,  to- 
confound  Homer,  the  son  of  Maeon,  with 
Homer,  the  son  of  Euphron,  is  hardly  less 
absurd  than  to  confound  John  Bunyan 
with  John  Milton,  Tom  Macaulay  with 
Tom  Paine,  Richard  Pigott  with  Richard 
Webster,  though  in  our  feeble  grasp  of 
the  Hellenic  nomenclature  we  are,  clairvoy 
as  we  may,  but  so  dimly  conscious  of  it. 
Be  it  our  task,  therefore,  in  the  present 
chapter  to  unravel  the  commingled  threads- 
of  the  two  strangely  interconcatenated  lives 
with  all  the  delicate  manipulatory  skill  at 
our  command. 

Homer  the  Younger  lived  in  Hesiod's 
time,  and  was  the  son  of  Euphron,  the 
Phocian.*  He  appears  to  have  been  de- 
scended from  a  Melanopus,  possibly  a 
descendant  of  the  Melanopus,  but  the  name 
Melanippus  or  Melanopus  was  so  common 
in  Asia  Minor  that  one  cannot  be  at  all 
certain  on  the  point.  And  through  him 
he  claimed  descent  from  Orpheus,  and 
through  him  to  Adas,  but  the  names  in  the 
stemma  from  Melanopus  to  Orpheus  are 
so  obviously  Bunyanesque  as  to  carry 
their  own  condemnation  with  them.  They 
*  Westermann's  "Lives,"  p.  47- 


398     The  Complete  Life  of  Homer. 

are  as  follow : — Melanopus,  the  son  of 
Thoughtful  (Epiphrades),  the  son  of  Sweet- 
voice  (Euphemus),  the  son  of  Fond-of- 
Music  (Philoterpes),  the  son  of  Fitz-Har- 
mony  (Harmonides),  the  son  of  True- 
Glory  (Eucles),  the  son  of  Ortis,  of  the 
race  of  Dorus,  the  son  of  Orpheus,  all  in 
the  poetical  line  you  observe,  and  altogether 
unreliable.* 

He  was  either  named  Homer  at  the  font, 
after  his  illustrious  predecessor,  or  took  the 
name  very  early,  as  no  hint  of  an  alias,  so 
far  as  I  am  aware,  has  come  down  to  us. 
He  was  educated  by  a  Creophylus,  I  pre- 
sume a  grandson  of ///6'  Creophylus,  though 
for  all  I  know  Ihe  Creophylus,  now  an  old 
man  of  eighty,  may  have  superintended  his 
studies.  As  was  natural  in  the  pupil  of  Creo- 
phylus he  was  a  devoted  Homerid,  and,  as 
a  collector  of  Homer's  works,  obtained  the 
name  of  Collector.  He  came  over  to 
Greece  to  spread  the  Gospel  according  to 
St.  Homer,  arriving  at  los  about  884  B.C. 
There  he  put  up  the  inscription  in  honour 
of  Homer,  which  the  pseudo- Herodotus 
truly  says  was  nol  written  by  Homer  {i.e.. 
Homer  the  Elder),  but  long  after,  and 
*  Lesches,  "  Contest  between  Homer  and  Hesiod." 


The  Co7nplete  Life  of  Horner,     399 

the  "Contest"  says,  not  less  truly,  was 
written  by  Homer  (that  is.  Homer  the 
Younger), — the  celebrated  inscription  of 
which  I  have  said  so  much  already. 

From  thence  he  went  to  Delos,  where, 
for  the  first  time,  he  met  his  father's  first 
cousin,  Hesiod.* 


^4 


At  Delos,  first  sang  we,  then,  I  and  sweet  Homer, 
Stitching  newly-made  hymns  to  the  branch  of  the 

laurel, 
Him     Latona     brought      forth, — golden -s  worded 

Apollo :  t 
I  sang,  and   sweet  Homer  he  plough'd  with   his 

reed 
On  the  wax-besmear'd  tablet  the  verses  I  sang."  % 


Homer  the  Collector  was  naturally  only 
too  happy  to  copy  out  the  lay  of  so 
eminent  a  bard. 

From  thence  the  pseudo- Homer  appears 
to  have  proceeded  to  Athens,  where  we 
are  told  he  recited  epigram  5  and  was  fined 
for  publishing  a  profane  book, — ''  The 
Iliad."  §  The  writers  who  say  this  took 
place  in  the  Archonship  of   Medon  con- 

*  Westermann,  p.  35,  line  51. 
t  Hesiod,  "Fragm."  ccxxvii.,  Goettl.,  p.  303. 
X  Schol,  Find.,  and  Eustath.,  "  II.,"  vi.  14. 
§  Heracl.,  book  ii.,  Diog.  Laert. 


400     The  Complete  Life  of  Homer, 

found  the  Homer  of  Crates  (born  1104) 
with  the  younger  Homer.  I  spare  the 
reader  here  a  lengthy  disquisition  upon 
the  many  sages,  heroes,  poets,  and  pa- 
triots,— the  Theseuses,  the  Homers,  the 
Miltiadeses,  the  Cimons,  the  Aristeideses, 
the  Themistocleses,  the  Anaxagorases, 
the  Antiphons,  the  Pericleses,  the  So- 
crateses,  and  the  Phocions  that  Jerusalem 
on  the  Ilissus  fined,  imprisoned,  ostra- 
cised, and  murdered.  Suffice  it  to  say, 
that  Homer  the  Younger  "shook  off  the 
dust  of  his  feet  as  a  testimony  against 
them,"  to  whom  every  reader  will  re- 
member St.  Paul  addressed  those  words 
of  mild  disdain,  *'  Oh,  Athenians,  I  per- 
ceive that  you  are  in  all  things  too 
superstitious  ";  and  singing  his  namesake's 
*'  Margites,"  mighty  appropriately  after  the 
usage  he  had  just  received  at  Athens, 
as  he  went,*  he  proceeded  to  Bceotia. 
Here  he  doubtless  renewed  his  acquaint- 
ance with  his  father's  cousin,  Hesiod. 
and,  becoming  intimate  with  him,  showed 
him  and  allowed  him  to  copy  out  all 
the  poems  of  Homer  of  which  he  had 
before  enjoyed  but  the  snatches  of  pass- 
*  Westermann,  p.  35,  lines  52-54. 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer.     401 

ing   minstrels,   their   visits   in   that   rude, 
boorish  region  being,  as  Milton  says  : — 

"  Like  angels'  visits — few  and  far  between." 

Here,  too,  he  composed  his  "Thebaid," 
and  after  flattering  the  patriotic  ardour 
of  Thebes  by  reciting  it  at  the  Kronia, 
a  musical  contest  there  in  celebration  of 
the  triumph  of  Learning  over  Time,*  he 
proceeded  to  Delphi,  where  the  oracle 
gratified  him  with  the  celebrated  reply  : — 


a 


Oh,  happy  and  unhappy,  for  you  are  born  to 
both,"  &c. 


The  people  there  pretended  that  it  had 
been  delivered  some  seventy  years  before, 
but  it  was  certainly  a  prophecy  after  the 
event,  and  probably  made  up  very  re- 
cently out  of  information  that  our  poet's 
high  priest  had  let  drop  during  his  stay 
in  Boeotia,  and  quite  possibly  put  into 
hexameters  that  very  day. 

Having  engraved  this  lying  imposture, 
little  thinking  how  terribly  he  was  bewil- 
dering all  posterity  thereby,  on  a  marble 
pillar  at  Delphi,  and  recited  his  own  Hymn 

*  Westermann's  "  Lives,"  p.  22. 
2  D 


402      The  Complete  Life  of  Horner, 

to  the  Pythian  Apollo  (Hymn  ii.),  the 
pseudo-Homer  went  on  his  way  rejoicing 
till  he  coming  from  Delphi  and  Hesiod  from 
Ascra,  they  met  at  Aulis,  in  Boeotia,  and 
from  thence  probably  sailed  over  together, 
singing  as  they  went,  to  Chalchis  in  Euboea. 
And  both  the  poets  having  contended  there 
in  a  marvellous  manner,  Hesiod  won  the 
prize ;  and  having  received  a  brazen  tripod 
with  handles  to  it,  he  offered  it  up  to  the 
Muses,  having  inscribed  the  following 
upon  it : — 

**  Hesiod  this  hath  dedicated 
To  the  Heliconian  Muses, 
Having  conquer'd  sainted  Homer." 

This  epigram  is  most  indisputably 
genuine.  We  have  for  it  the  quintuple 
authority  of  (i)  the  Anthology;  (2)  Varro; 
(3)  Aulus  Gellius  ;  (4)  Chrysostom  ;  (5) 
Hesiod  himself,  as  we  shall  see  presently. 

But  surely  neither  Hesiod,  nor  any  one 
there,  seriously  believed  that,  like  Jacob 
at  Peniel,  he  had  prevailed  over  a  semi- 
divine  bard,  but  only  over  a  mere  man 
like  himself.  The  epithet,  *'  divine," 
Hesiod  applies  half-play  fully  to  the  great 
poet's  homonym,   his  cousin  Homer,  the 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer.     403 

son  of  Euphron,  though  the  poems  he  was 
recitmg    were    his    very    own,    much    as 
Macpherson  was  doubtless  often  spoken  of 
as  "Ossian"  by  the  critics,  even  when  dis- 
cussmg  poems  that  were  admittedly  his 
We  must  not,  therefore,  credit  Paneides 
with    the    wretched    taste   of    preferring; 
Hesiod  to  the  true  Homer.     The  pseudo- 
Homer  only  recited  his  own  verses  here, 
which  doubtless  were  considerably  inferior 
to  those  of  the  author  of  ''  The  Works  and 
Days."     I  am,  of  course,  well  aware  that 
Lesches  represents  the  matter  otherwise  • 
but  though  the  prologue  and  epilogue  of 
his  "Agon"  (the  work  of  a  bungling  editor 
many  centuries  after  him)  is  history,  albeit 
wretchedly    garbled    and    unreliable,   the 
*'Agon"  itself,  which  alone  is  his,  is  the 
purest  fiction  possible. 

But  not  for  a  moment  must  the  reader 
be  led  by  the  perverse  ingenuity  of  the 
pseudo-learned  to  doubt  that  there  was  an 
''  Agon."  Plutarch,  in  his  ''  Banquet  of  the 
Seven  Wise  Men,"  and  again  in  his  "  Sym- 
posiacs,"  book  v.,  distinctly  accredits  it 
So  also  do  Lucian,  Proclus,  Philostratus, 
Themistius,  Libanius,  and,  of  course,  the 
writers  already  quoted  as  authorities  for 

2   D  2 


404     The  Complete  Life  of  Homer, 

the  epigram.  The  arrogance,  therefore, 
of  the  modern  pedants  that  venture  to  dis- 
pute it,  is  simply  monstrous.  Especially 
as  we  have  the  authority,  not  only  of  the 
above  countless  august  names,  but  also,  as  I 
have  already  said,  that  of  Hesiod  himself,  in 
the  following  most  certainly  genuine  pas- 
sage of  the  *'  Works  and  Days  '*:  — 

"  Ej'Oa   0   Ey(i)v  ETT   aeOXa  lauppoi'oc  A^cptCafiayroQ 
XaXKi^a  T   ei(Te7r€pr)(Ta'  ra  ^e  rrpoTre^paC/jiEva  rroWa 
AOX  ederrav  Trai^eg  fieyaXrjropeg  eyda  fie  (prjfiL 
Y/iVw  riKijarapra  (pepeiy  rpiirot^  wTwerTU 
^'Yfii'G)  j'lKqaayr  ev  XaXtCiZi  Oeiov  'Ofirjpoi'.'^ 

This  passage  was  obviously  interpolated 
by  the  excited  poet  shortly  after  his 
victory.  The  line  to  which  I  have  affixed 
an  asterisk  he  probably  suppressed  in  a 
cooler  moment.  The  translation  is  as 
follows  : — 

"  Whence  to  the  Games  of  Sage  Archidamas, 

I   sail'd   to   Chalchis,  and  his  brave   sons  pro- 
claim'd 
A  prize  for  each  form  of  merit.     There  I  was 
Victor  in  Song  [victor  o'er  Homer]  named. 

Unto  the  Nine  to  whom  I  owed  my  skill, 
The  prize  I  won  on  that  eventful  day 

I  consecrated  on  my  native  Hill, 
Where  you  may  see  it,  should  you  go  that  way." 


T/ie  Complete  Life  of  Homer.     405 

Further,  it  appears  from  the  pseudo- 
Homers  second  hymn  to  Venus  (Hymn 
vi.)*  that  he  was  engaged  in  many  such 
contests ;  we  may  even  say  that  such  con- 
tests were  usual  in  his  time  : — 

"  Oh,  laughter-loving  Queen,  my  soul  inspire, 
And  grant  me  victory  on  '  the  living  lyre.'  " 

He  wrote  his  Thebais  in  Phocis  and 
Boeotia,  and  his  Epigoni  in  Attica  and 
Achaia.  But  when  he  got  to  Argos,  once 
more  changing  his  therne  to  suit  the  popu- 
lar taste,  he  recited  book  after  book  of  the 
''Iliad."  And  the  Argives  honoured  him 
with  costly  gifts,  and  set  up  a  brazen 
statue  of  The  Poet ;  and  voted  to  sacrifice 
to  him  both  daily  and  monthly  and 
annually,  and  every  fifth  year  to  send  an 
especial  offering  to  Chios.  And  under 
the  statue  they  wrote  as  follows  : — 

"  See  here  divine  Homer, 

Who  adorn'd  with  his  Ditty, 
Greece  and  Argos  that  sackt 
The  God-builded  city." 


*  Venus  talks  in  it  of  Otreus  (the  son  of  Orpheus), 
mythological  ancestor  of  the  pseudo  but  not  the 
genuine  Homer,  a  clear  proof  that  the  former  and 
not  the  latter  was  the  author  of  it. 


4o6     The  Complete  Life  of  Homer, 

And  having  stayed  a  considerable  time 
at  Argos,  he  sailed  to  Delos  to  the  Great 
Festival.  And  there  standinor  on  the 
altar  of  Horn,  he  recited  the  hymn  to 
Apollo,  which  Homer  had  left  behind  him 
when  he  died,  of  which  the  beofinninof  was 
*'  Let  me  remember," — the  first  line  of  the 
hymn  as  it  now  stands.  After  the  hymn 
had  been  recited,  the  lonians  made  the 
inspired  evangelist  of  the  new  divinity  a 
citizen,  and  the  Delians  having  written 
the  poem  down  on  a  Leucoma,  a  tablet 
covered  with  gypsum,  the  Latin  album, 
they  dedicated  it  in  the  Temple  of  Artemis, 
probably  adding  thereto  Homer's  fine 
hymn  to  that  goddess.  And  when  the 
festival  had  broken  up  the  collector  sailed 
away  from  Greece,  882  B.C.,  to  Creophylus, 
at  Samos.  He  died  possibly  at  Scyros,* 
and  possibly  at  90. t  His  pseudo-stemma 
from  Orpheus  to  Melanopus  we  have  seen 
on  page  393  ;  his  connexion  by  marriage 
with  Homer  the  Elder,  on  pages  207,  208; 
and  his  true  stemma  to  the  Terpander  we 
have  also  seen  on  page  208.  His  daughter, 
whose    name   we    do    not  know,   married 

*  Leo  Allatius,  "  De  Patria  Homeri." 
t  John  Tzetzes,  "  Chiliades." 


The    Complete  Life  of  Homer.     407 

Stasinus,  to  whom  it  seems  not  improbable 
that  he  may  have  communicated  the  few 
surviving  traditionary  lines  of  the  lost  and 
stolen  Cypria,  which  that  poet  embodied 
in  his  own  poem,  and  because  he  chanced 
to  be  a  Cyprian,  it  came  to  be  thought 
that  the  poem  derived  its  tide  from  that 
altogether  irrelevant  fact. 

From  Hymn  VL  it  would  seem  that  he 
came  to  Cyprus  to  take  part  in  a  musical 
contest.  Here  most  probably  he  first 
made  acquaintance  with  Stasinus,  his 
future  son-in-law.  On  the  occasion  of  the 
marriage  he  probably  wrote  one  of  the 
Epithalamia  Suidas  speaks  of.*  He  also 
^•rote  Hymns.*  Two  of  the  Homeric 
hymns  certainly.  And  this  is  pretty  well 
ill  we  know  about  him.  Come  we  now, 
ihen,  to  the  question  of  his  date.  We 
lave  a  multitude  of  proofs  that  he  was 
3orn  about  913  b.c. 

(i)  He  was  a  descendant  in  the  fifth 
generation  from  Charidemus,  the  founder 
of  Cumae  (1033  b.c),  which  certainly 
harmonises  very  well  with  his  being  born 
about  that  time. 

(2)  Solinus,   in  telling  us   that   Homer 
*  Suidas,  art.  "  Homer." 


4o8      The  Complete  Life  of  H outer . 

died  at  los  913  B.C.,  as  good  as  tells  us 
that  he  saw  an  inscription  there,  or  else- 
where, Homeros  ho poietes gegoite,  913  B.C., 
but  that  he  confounded  the  two  Homers, 
and  translated ^^^<?«^  by  ''  vixit"  with  Nepos 
and  the  other  Latinists.  That  is,  in  telling 
us  that  Homer  (the  Elder)  died  at  los, 
913  B.C.,  he  virtually  tells  us  that  Homer 
(the  Younger)  was  boi'n  there  or  rather  at 
(Ch)ios,  913  B.C. 

(3)  He  was  born  in  the  reign  of  Age- 
silaus  I.,  therefore  not  earlier  than  930  b.c., 
and  probably  not  much  later,  as  the  reign 
of  that  prince  was  a  short  one. 

(4)  He  was  ten  generations,  plus  the 
age  of  his  mother  at  the  time  of  his  birth, 
from  his  illustrious  ancestor (?),  Orpheus 
the  Argonaut,*  And  913  plus  333  (length 
of  ten  generations)  plus  25  (age  of  mother), 
about  equals  1225  (the  date  of  Argonautic 
Expedition). 

(5)  Hesiod  was  born  about  100  years 
after  Homer  (the  Elder),  which  would 
make  him  born  either  944  (according  to 
Aristotle),  or  915  (according  to  the  true 
date),  in  the  archonship  of  Megacles, 
about  937  (according  to  the  Parian  Marble). 

*  Westermann's  "Lives,"  p. 35. 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer.     409^ 

And,  again,  the  first  and  third  of  these 
calculations  harmonise  very  well  with  the 
pseudo-Homer  being  born  about  915  b.c. 
About  that  difference  of  age  may  be  sup- 
posed between  the  son  and  the  cousin-in- 
law  of  Euphron  the  Phocian. 

(6)  We  are  told  that  Hesiod  was  born 
at  the  beginning,  and  Homer  at  the  end 
of  the  same  archonship,  which  again 
would  make  Hesiod  born  about  937  and 
Homer  about  921,  at  the  conclusion  of  the 
archonship  of  Megacles. 

(7)  The  Parian  Chronicle  says,  ''  Homer,, 
the  poet,  appeared  907  b.c." 

And  now  with  respect  to  Lycurgus.  To 
begin  with,  he  was  tenth  or  eleventh  from 
Hercules, — that  is,  being  interpreted,  he 
was  between  ten  and  eleven  generations 
from  Hercules.  Three  generations,  re- 
collect, gentle  reader  !  make  one  century, 
exactly  as  twelve  inches  make  one  foot. 
Hercules,  therefore,  being  born  1261  B.C., 
this  makes  Lycurgus  born  about  ten  and 
a  half  generations,  or  350  years  after  1261. 
This  gives  Lycurgus  born  911  B.C.  An- 
other author  says  in  the  [  ]  eighth 
year  after  the  Fall  of  Troy, — that  is,  915 
B.C.,    exactly    harmonising    with    Cicero's 


4IO     The  Complete  Life  of  Homer, 

wavering  testimony  :  '*  Lycurgum  cujus 
temporibus  Homerus  fuisse  traditur" 
("  Tusc,"  V.  3),  and — 

""  Non  infra  superiorem  Lycurgum  fuit  "  (Brut.,  c.  10). 

Again,  Lycurgus  was  Regent  at  the  birth 
of  Charilaus,  884  B.C.  (as  Eratosthenes 
says :  "His  Regency  commenced  885 
B.C."*),  and  was  sought  with  infamous  sug- 
gestions by  the  wicked  queen-mother  in 
marriage,  and,  in  conjunction  with  iphitus, 
arranged  the  Olympic  Games  that  same 
year ;  all  which  he  could  not  well  have 
done,  had  he  been  born  much  later. 
Tercentenary  of    the    Fall    of 

Troy ! 
Celebration      of     the      Great 

Triumph   of  United  Greece 

at  the  Olympic  Games,  re-  -884  B.C. 

vived  after  interval  of  over 

three  centuries ! 
Sunakmazousia    of    Hesiod    and 

Homer  the  Younger  ! 

I  believe  this  to  be  the  very  meaning  of 

the  loose  language  and   round  figures  of 

Herodotus.     "  Homer  and    Hesiod,"   not 

Homer   alone,    '*  were   400   years    before 

*  Flach.,  "  Parian  Marble,"  p.  39. 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer,     4 1 1 

me, — that  is,  their  era  was  400  years 
before  my  time."  This  was  a  date  Hero- 
dotus could  not  well  help  knowing.  To  a 
literary  Greek  it  was,  indeed,  a  most  inte- 
resting one,  and  excuses  a  slight  inaccuracy 
of  statement. 

The  Olympiad  of  Olympiads,  so  to 
speak,  the  Tercentenarian  Olympiad,  from 
887  to  %%2i  ^-C,  was  precisely  the  period 
to  publish  the  great  epic  of  the  Trojan 
war  through  the  whole  length  of  Hellas* 
And  naturally,  in  the  dim  ages  that  fol- 
lowed, the  first  great  publisher  got  con- 
founded with  the  actual  poet,  especially  as 
he  was  a  poet  himself,  and  distant  from  the 
poet,  in  point  of  birth,  only  the  space  of 
just  a  century.  On  the  other  side  of  the 
-^gean,  that  is,  but  never  in  his  own 
native  yEolis  and  the  strip  of  Asia  that 
owned  its  literary  sway, — never  in  Lydo- 
Caria,  where  the  veritable  Life  of  Lives 
was  written. 

Next  we  read  that  vSosibius  finds 
Homer's  name  in  the  Spartan  archives  in 
the  eighth  year  of  Charilaus,  the  Eury- 
pontid.  That  cannot  mean  that  Homer 
(the  Younger)  died  876  B.C.,  for  then 
his  daughter  was  not  of  marriageable  age, 


412      The  Complete  Life  of  Home 7\ 

perhaps  not  born.  What  does  it  mean, 
then  ?  Why,  the  great  Homeric  find,  to 
be  sure.  Plutarch  is  himself,  and  leaves 
his  readers,  in  great  doubt  whether 
Lycurgus  did  or  did  not  see  the  Great 
Collector,  the  proto-Bibliomaniac,  Homer 
(the  Younger) ;  but  whether  he  did  or  not, 
he  certainly  found  the  works  of  Homer  (the 
Elder)  in  the  possession  of  the  apogonoi 
(grandchildren)  of ///^  Creophilus,  Homer's 
friend,  and,  possibly,  the  very  aged  super- 
intendent of  the  pseudo- Homer  s  boyish 
studies,  about  876  B.C.  Up  to  this  time 
the  works  of  Homer  were  very  imperfectly 
known  at  Sparta,  and,  in  all  probability, 
Macpherson  was  generally  confounded 
with  Ossian,  the  Collector  with  the  Poet, 
the  Minstrel  that  had  been  defeated  at 
Aulis  by  Hesiod,  with  the  greatest 
Minstrel  of  all  times.  So  the  discovery  of 
a  complete  copy  of  the  "Iliad"  and  the 
*' Odyssey"  was  a  supremely  important 
literary  event,  and  very  well  worthy  of 
record.  And  this  explanation  of  the  date 
in  question  very  neatly  dovetails  in  with 
what  the  venerable  Bishop  of  Nicomedia 
tells  us  in  another  place, — that  Lycurgus 
legislated  in  the  second  year  of  Thespius 


The  Co7nplete  Life  of  Homer,     413 

and  the  thirtieth  of  Teleclus,  i,e.,  875  B.C., 
by  which  he  must  mean  that  Lycurgus 
returned  home  with  the  works  of  our  poet 
and  commenced  his  work  as  legislator  at 
that  date. 

Eratosthenes,  Apollodorus,  Thucydides, 
and  Strabo,  all  confirm  the  above  dates ; 
Eratosthenes,  Apollodorus,  and  Timaeus 
say  Lycurgus  lived  many  years  before  the 
first  Olympiad ;  Thucydides,  that  it  was 
somewhat  over  four  centuries  since  Sparta 
set  out  on  the  route  of  law  and  order,  to 
conquest,  and  honour  ;  Strabo  puts  him 
in  the  fifth  generation  from  Althemenes, 
the  eighth  from  Euclus  and  Procles  ;  and 
Timaeus  says  he  lived  in  the  time  of 
Homer,  meaning,  of  course,  Homer  the 
Younger. 

But  an  idea  of  the  utter  muddle 
caused  by  confusing  the  two  Homers 
may  be  formed  from  the  following  pass- 
ages, amongst  others,  taken  from  Wester- 
mann's  *' Lives": — "And  he"  (meaning 
Homer  the  Younger)  "was  born  fifty-seven 
years  before  the  first  Olympiad  "  (that  of 
Corcebus  ;  that  is,  he  was  born  941  B.C.) ; 
*'but  Porphyrius,  in  his  'Philosophical 
History,'  says  he"  (meaning  Homer  the 


414     ^^^^  Complete  Life  of  Homer. 

Elder)  ''was  born  132  years  before,  i,e,, 
1015  B.C.  Suidas  and  Porphyry  are  both 
right,  but  talking  of  different  persons. 
So  again,  *'  Some  say  that  Homer  was 
born  160  years  only  after  the  Fall  of 
Troy."  So  the  elder  was.  But  Por- 
phyrius  says  275  after,  i.e.  908  B.C.,  mean- 
ing: the  Youncrer.  And  so  he  was. 
Lastly,  "  And  he,  Hesiod,  was  older 
according  to  some  (those  that  made  his 
date  944  by  subtracting  100  from  the 
Homeric  date  of  Aristotle),  and  accord- 
ing to  others  (those  that  made  his  date 
915  by  subtracting  100  from  Homer's 
true  date)  the  same  age  as  Homer."  (Yes, 
as  Homer  the  Younger.)  "  But  Porphyry 
and  very  many  others  reckon  him  a  hun- 
dred years  younger"  (Yes,  than  Homer 
the  Elder),  "and  only  32  years  before  the 
first  Olympiad."     That  is,  915. 

And  yet,  date  apart,  it  is  marvellous  how 
any  one  could  confuse  the  two  Homers, 
and  not  perceive  that  they  were  two.  The 
one  surnamed  Auletes,  the  other  surnamed 
the  Collector.  The  one  an  ^olid  all  over, 
the  other  an  Ionian  of  Chios.  The  one 
singing  of  Diana  and  Simoeisius  and  the 
rushes  of  the   Meles,  the  other  tracing  his 


The  Complete  Life  of  Hofuer.      415 

blood  through  Ma^on  the  Adventurer, 
and  the  Amazons  to  Orpheus  (whom  the 
true  Homer  never  once  names),  and  from 
him  to  Atlas.  The  one  a  blind  strolling 
beggar,  the  other  a  well-to-do  citizen,  as 
wholly  oblivious  of  his  pretended  blind- 
ness as  any  begging-letter  impostor.  The 
one  the  Homer  of  Herodotus's  posthu- 
mous work,  the  other  the  Homer  of 
Lesches's  *'Agon,"  and  of  the  pseudo- 
Plutarchus.  The  one  most  certainly  the 
son  of  a  Phocian  and  the  grandson  of  a 
Boeotian,  as  appears  quite  clearly  from 
the  stemma  from  him  to  his  descendant 
Terpander,  the  other  most  certainly  an 
Asiatic  Greek.  The  one  a  contempo- 
rary of  Hesiod,  as  appears  by  that 
poet's  own  distinct  statement,  the  other 
most  indubitably  long  before  him,  as 
appears  by  his  quoting,  adapting,  ampli- 
fying, supplementing,  commenting  upon„ 
and  making  a  text  of  him, — in  a  word,, 
dealing  by  him  just  as  the  Cyclic  poets  did, 
and  just  as  we  deal  by  the  Bible  and 
Shakespeare.  The  one  flourishing  in  the 
archonship    of     Archippus,*     the     other 

*  Baletta,  "  Life  of  Homer,"  p.  20. 


41 6     The  Complete  Life  of  Homer, 

appealing  m  the  archonship  of  Diognetus.* 
The  one  receiving  a  silver  phial  for  a  six- 
line  epigram,!  the  other  singing  for  pip- 
kins, fieldfares,  coppers,  and  hunks  of 
bread.  The  one  with  a  frouzy  ragged 
Sancho-Panza  to  lead  him  about  in  his 
blindness — Bucco,  whom  Tzetzes  pokes  fun 
at ;  the  other  keeping  a  swell  Grosvenor- 
square  footman  named  Scindapsus,  with  a 
hundred  guineas  or  so  in  his  purse.  But 
why  insist  further  upon  a  matter  so  ob- 
vious ?  Only  compare  the  genuine  life  of 
Homer  by  Herodotus  with  the  spurious 
lifeby  Suidas  and  the  "Agon"  of  Lesches, 
and  you  will  see  the  difference. 

Still  they  we7X  confused  ;  and  the  causes 
of  the  confusion  I  have  now  last  of  all  to 
investigate. 

And  first  as  regards  Solinus. 

Solinus  very  probably  had  access  to  two 
sources  of  information.  One  quite  modern, 
say  at  los,  and  replacing  the  now  long- 
vanished  tombstone  : — 

^'  Homer,"  meaning  the  elder,  "  died  (humanis  rebus 
excessit)  at  los,  err]  Xiy  (953  B.C.);" 


*  The  "  Parian  Marbles,"  p.  16  ;  Euseb.,  "  Chron.," 
vol.  ii. 

t  Westermann's  "Lives,"  p.  43. 


T/ie  Complete  Life  of  Homer,    417 


and  another,  no  matter  where,  containing 
the  words  *'  'O/iiTjpo^,  meaning  the  Younger^ 
ysyoi/s,  270  years  after  the  Fall  of  Troy," 
or  words  to  that  effect.  Understanding, 
then,  both  inscriptions  to  refer  to  the  same 
Homer  and  not  to  two  entirely  different 
ones,  he  could  only  interpret  'O/xTjpo^ 
-^/^yt^v^  in  the  latter  with  the  whole 
Latin  school  by  ''  Homerus  vixit."  Homer 
died  1183-270=913  B.C. 

And  in  this  error  he  would  be  strongly 
confirmed  if  in  the  course  of  several  years 
the  nu  (v)  had  been  blurred  in  the  first 
record  into  the  appearance  of  an  iota  (*) 
whereby  the  first  record  came  to  signify 
''  Homer  died  913,"  instead  of  953  *'iT.c."; 
in  other  words,  came  to  signify  the  same 
as  the  second  record. 

But  just  as  Solinus  was  fatally  betrayed 
into  translating  gegone,  which  really  means 
"was  born"  by  "  vixit,"  ix.,  ''died,"  so 
Astyanax  was  no  less  fatally  betrayed  into 
translating  scJ^ai/Tj,  which  means  ''appeared," 
by  "  was  born." 

If  you  only  read  the  account  in  Lesches 
of  Homer's  reception  at  Delos,*  you  will 
admit    that    nothing    could    be    more    su- 

*  Westermann's  "  Lives,"  pp.  44,  45. 

2   E 


41 8     The  Complete  Life  of  Homer. 

premely  probable  than  that  the  Delians 
should  put  up  an  inscription  to  commemo- 
rate that  most  interesting  occasion  when 
the  poet  solemnly  consecrated  himself  to 
the  service  of  his  tutelary  divinity  in  the 
following  words  :  **  Homeros  ho  poietes 
ephane."  Homer  the  poet  appeared  302 
years  after  the  Fall  of  Troy,  which  he 
immortalised  in  his  song,  ix,,  about  three 
years  after  he  came  to  los,  two  years  after 
the  great  Tercentenary, — in   other  words, 

882  B.C. 

I  say  Delos  on  the  authority  of  this 
passage  of  Westermann's  *'  Lesches,'*  but 
anv  city  (Argos,  for  instance)  would  do  cus 
well  at  which  he  "  appeared "  302  B.C. 
And  surely  somewhere  or  other  some  such 
an  inscription  is  an  absolute  certainty. 
Now,  what  1  maintain  is,  that  the  passage 
in  Flach's  "  Chronicon  Parium,"  p.  16  : — 

"  Homeros  ho  poietes  ephane," 

is  simply  a  quotation  from  this  inscription. 
For  his  own  most  mistaken  date  for  the 
Fall  of  Troy  being  1209  B.C.,  by  subtract- 
ino-  302  from  it  he  obtained  907  B.C.  as 
the  date  of  the  birth  of  Homer.  Of  the 
appearance    it    could    not   be,   as   it   was 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer,    419 

perfectly  notorious  that  he  appeared  in 
Greece,  884-882  b.c,  to  take  part  in  the 
commemoration  of  the  grand-grand-grand- 
Tercentenary. 

The  following  is  the  stemma  of  the 
pseudo-Homer  from  Melanopus, sixth  from 
Orpheus : — 

Melanopus.* 

Apelles  t Dius  I. 

Maeon  I.  \  Perses. 

Homer  the  Elder... Dius  H.     Maeon  II. 

Hesiod.     Clymene  (married 

Euphron). 
Homer  II. 


*  Not  the  Melanopus,  but,  presumably,  a  near  kins- 
man of  his. 

t  Corrupted  from  Aphelles,  i.e.,  "Come  from 
Greece,"  as  Melanopus  was  from  Melanippus,  and 
Kritheis  from  Kretheis. 

{  Homer's  kinsman,  and  father  by  adoption. 


2   E   2 


420     The  Complete  Life  of  Homer. 


CHRONOLOGICAL   SUMMARY. 


Homer  the  Elder  born       ...         ...         ...   i 

Homer  the  Elder  died   [between  953  and] 

Hesiod  born 

Homer  the  Younger  born ...  

Lycurgus  born 

Homer  the  Younger  at  los 

Lycurgus  Regent    ... 

Lycurgus  celebrates  the  Tercentenary  of  the 
Fall  of  Troy  at  Olympia 

Homer  the  Younger  leaves  Greece 

Lycurgus  discovers  the  works  of  Homer 
at  Chios,  has  them  copied  out,  and  brings 
them  with  him  to  Sparta 

Lycurgus  commences  the  work  of  legisla- 
tion ..• 

Hesiod  becomes  conspicuous, — that  is,  dies, 
and  the  celebrated  edition  de  luxe  on 
lead  of  his  great  work,  "  The  Works  and 
Days,"  is  published  by  his  admiring 
countrymen  in  the  seventh  year  of  Al- 
camenes,  that  is... 
Lycurgus  ''  establishes  his  laws  "  * 

Lycurgus  goes  into  voluntary  exile 

Death  of  Lycurgus 

Death  of  Homer  the  Younger,  aged  90  ( ?  ) 


015-14 

943 

944-937 

913-915 

911-915 

885-4 

885-4 

884 

882 

876 

875 

854 
843 

842 

831 
823-5 


*  Eusebius,  "Chronicon,*  vol.  ii. 


CHAPTER    X. 


OUR    AUTHORITIES. 

But  what  authority  have  we  for  all  these 
things  ?  (i)  The  "  Lives"  published  by 
Westermann  ;  (2)  Numerous  scattered 
notices  in  Pausanias,  Diodorus,  Plutarch, 
Herodotus,  Atheneeus,  ^lian,  Ptolemy, 
Tzetzes,  Eusebius,  Suidas,  Stephanus  By- 
zantius,  the  ''Anthology,"  Muller's  '^Frag- 
menta  Graecae  Historiae,"  the  '^Anecdota," 
the  "Scholia,"  and  the  "  Lexica";  (3)  Al- 
latius,  *'  De  Patria  Homeri";  (4)  Baletta's 
''Life";  (5)  Wolffs  -  Prolegomena ';  (6)  The 
labours  of  Welcker,  Smith,  Grote,  Mure, 
and  the  venerable  author  of  '*  Homeric 
Studies." 

But  incomparably  the  most  important  of 
all  these  is  the  "Life"  by  Herodotus,  dili- 
gently  compared  with  and  illustrated  by 
the   entire    works   of     Homer,    i.e.,    the 


422      The  Complete  Life  of  Homer, 

''  Iliad,"  the  ^'Odyssey,"  the  **  Batrachomy- 
omachia,"  the  "Hymns,"  the  ''Epigrams," 
and  the  ''  Fragments."     If  we  wish  to  form 
a  fair  estimate  of  this  truly  valuable  work, 
we  have  only  to  compare  it  with  the  works 
of  the   pseudo-Plutarchus,  of   Suidas,    of 
Lesches,  and  of  Tzetzes.     From  beginning 
to  end,  I  can  follow  the  work  of  Herodotus 
with  the  most  absolute  and  implicit  con- 
fidence, whereas  the  works  of  those  three 
other  authors  literally  swarm  with  the  most 
monstrous  blunders  and  contradictions  of 
every  possible  kind.     Frightful,  indeed,  is 
the    muddle    that  Tzetzes   makes    whilst 
confusing  the  Homer  of  Crates  that  "  lived 
in  the  time  of  the   wars  of  Thebes  and 
Troy"  with  the  *' seven-fathered,  seven- 
citied"     Homer,      that     ''was     born    at 
Smyrna"  (for  even  he,  in    the   midst  of 
all  his  blunders,  holds  fast   by  that    one 
cardinal   truth),  but   "wandered  all   over 
Greece";  whereas  the  true  Homer  never 
came  to  Greece  at  all. 

''  But  the  work  is  not  a  genuine  work  of 
Herodotus."  It  is,  and  it  is  not.  Learned 
divines  are  agreed,  I  believe,  that  Matthew 
wrote  his  Gospel,  not  in  Greek,  but  in 
Hebrew.     Is,    therefore,    the   Gospel   we 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer,     423 

now  have  not  genuine  }  Again,  are  my 
chapters  based  on  the  "  Life "  genuine  ^ 
They  are  a  garbled  version  of  the  "  Life,'' 
but  are  they  not,  therefore,  genuine  ? 

Now  turn  to  the  "  Life."  What  does 
one  see  at  the  first  glance?  It  does  not 
even  profess  to  be  the  Life  that  Herodotus 
wrote  (any  more  than  my  three  chapters 
profess  to  be  It),  but  only  an  abstract  there- 
from. Just  as  I  have  the  "  Life  "  before 
me,  so  the  author  of  the  "  Life  "  had  some 
yet  earlier  work  before  him,  and  I  un- 
doubtingly  believe  a  very  ancient  work 
written  by  Herodotus,  or  which  at  any 
rate  he  honestly  believed  to  be  so.  "  But 
why  has  he  not  reproduced  it  ?"  Because 
it  would  not  have  suited  his  purpose. 
Exactly,  gentle  reader,  as  I  have  not  re- 
produced the  "  Life."  There  are  three 
all  extremely  obvious  reasons  why  the 
original  work  may  have  been  unproducible. 
(i)  The  lapse  of  time  between  Herodotus 
and  Adrian  may  have  reduced  the  work 
to  a  mere  series  of  fragments  in  the  last 
stage  of  corruption.  (2)  It  may  have  fallen 
behind  the  times  and  have  been,  in  many 
vital  respects,  unsuitable  for  the  highly  con- 
troversial  purpose  that  the  editor  had  in 


424      The  Complete  Life  of  Homer, 

publishing    it.       (3)  There  are    the   very 
strongest  reasons  for  beUeving  that  it  was 
written,    not    for   Greek,    but   for   Carian 
readers,    and     was,    therefore,   written    in 
Carian  Greek,  or  the  native  Carian  what- 
ever   that  may  have  been.     I    should  be 
mad  (should  I  not  ?)  if  I  published  a  *'  Life 
of  Homer,"  professedly  a  translation  from 
'*  The   Life,"  but    really  varying  from    it 
wherever  it  suited  my  purpose.     And  the 
editor  would  not  have  been  one  whit  less 
mad  had  he  tried  to  pass  upon  the  world 
as   Herodotus  a  work  that  any  schoolboy,. 
— any   one    with    the    smallest   tinge   of 
Greek, — can  see  at  a  glance  is  not   Hero- 
dotus.    Pas  si  bete.     He  does  nothing  of 
the  sort,  as  any  one  of  the  smallest  critical 
acumen   may  perceive.     Only   notice  the 
changes  of  the  tenses  from  the  past,  where 
he  is  giving  his  author  s  own  words  to  the 
present,  where  he  is  giving  a  mere  abstract 
or  introducing  controversial  matter  of  his 
own  finding  or  explanations  that  he  deems 
advisable,  and  you  will  admit  that  he  is. 
serving  Herodotus  exactly  as  I  am  serving 
him.     That  he  had  something  genuinely 
Herodotean  to  work  upon  there  can  be  no 
reasonable  doubt      For    (i)   If  you  look 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer.     425 

them  out  in  your  ''  Liddel  and  Scott,"  you. 
will  find  the  words  marvellously  Herodo- 
tean. (2)  The  chronology,  with  its  fright- 
ful blunder  as  to  the  time  of  the  Fall 
of  Troy,  is  Herodotean.  (3)  Its  great 
defect, — inadequate  information  on,  per- 
haps, the  most  interesting  question  of  all, 
the  works  of  Homer,  —  is  eminently 
Herodotean.  Almost  any  modern,  with 
Herodotus's  advantages,  would  have  given 
us  twenty  times  the  information  on  early 
Greek  literature  that  he  has  done.  (4) 
Its  second  great  defect ;  its  strange, 
absolute  ignorance  of  all  Chian  affairs, 
even  those  most  intimately  connected  with 
Homeric  story,  is  unintelligible  except  in 
a  very  early  writer,  whose  native  land 
had  not  long  emerged  from  Asiatic 
barbarism,  whilst  his  full  knowledge  of  all 
that  the  lonians  and  ^olians  had  to  tell 
shows  us  how  close  by  them  he  w^as.  (5) 
The  general  tone  of  thought,  the  colour- 
ing, the  method,  the  simplicity,  the  love 
of  the  marvellous,  are  all  eminently 
Herodotean.  (6)  Of  its  honesty  (where  it 
knows  nothing,  saying  nothing),  of  its  in- 
tense probability,  of  its  absolute  reliability, 
I    have    already    spoken.       Of    its    many 


426     The  Complete  Life  of  Homer, 

touches  of  that  self-proof  of  which  Paley 
makes    such    skilful    use    in    his   ''Horai 
Paulin^e "   I  lack  time  to   speak.       I  will 
content  myself  with  two  only,     {a)  Ty- 
chius,    of    Tyche    Smyrna,    reappears    a 
thousand  years  afterwards  as  the  Tychicus 
that  was  St.  Paul's  amanuensis  in  writing 
to  the  Ephesians.     And  who  knows  not 
the     intimate     connexion    between      the 
Ephesian  Dianolaters  and  the  Amazono- 
Smyrniotes  ?      {b)  Herodotus  tells  us  of 
the  never-dying  curse  our  poet  laid  upon 
Cyme  ;  and  Stephanus  Byzantius  informs 
us    that   the    inhabitants   of   Cyme    were 
universally  jeered  at  for    their   stupidity. 
(6)      Eustathius    and    Tzetzes    admit  its 
authenticity.      (7)    Suidas  copies     out   a 
laro-e  portion  of  the  work  into  his  own  as 
bemg  of  undoubted  authority.     (8)  Lastly, 
the  proof  from    history   is    very    strong. 
After  Artemisia's  return  to  Caria  an  ardent 
Homeromania,  led  by  her  brother  Pigres, 
set  in  at  the  Carian   Court.     The  Peisis- 
tratid   copy    may,    as  Welcker    supposes, 
have  been  brought  from  Athens  after  the 
capture    of   that    city    by    the     Persians. 
Pigres    was  just  the  man  to  take  it ;  and 
it  certainly  was    never  seen   or  heard   of 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer.     427 

afterwards.  Herodotus,  then  a  tiny  school- 
boy, may  have  caught  the  blessed  infection, 
and  a  little  work  in  the  native  Carian  or  in 
Carian  Greek,  may  have  been  one  of  his 
earliest  efforts.  Nor  is  the  difference  of 
date  anything.  Only  Herodotus  took,  in 
Caria,  the  old  Ionic,  and  in  European 
Greece,  the  modern  Delphian  view. 

I  consider,  and  the  reader  has  partly 
seen,  that  there  are  five  eminently 
Homeric  epochs  in  the  history  of  Hel- 
lenic literature,  (i)  The  time  of  Homer 
himself;  (2)  that  of  Homer  the  Younger, 
Hesiod,  and  Lycurgus ;  (3)  that  of 
Herodotus ;  (4)  that  of  Alexander  the 
Great,  beginning  with  Aristotle  and  end- 
ing with  the  Alexandrine  School ;  (5) 
that  of  Adrian.  This  renders  it  addition- 
ally probable  that  *'The  Life"  was  written 
in  either  period  3  or  4.  But  in  period  4 
the  two  Homers  were  utterly  confounded, 
therefore  it  was  written  in  period  3, 
beginning  with  Pigres,  and  ending  with 
Dioscorides.  This  was  a  period  of  great 
literary  activity  on  the  Western  Asiatic 
coast,  from  Chios  to  Halicarnassus,  and, 
what  is  more,  of  great  activity  in  Homeric 
literature,    to   say    nothing    of    Panyasis, 


428     The  Complete  Life  of  Homer, 

and   other   writers    of    general   literature. 
Then  Pigres  first  introduced  the  works  of 
Homer  into  Caria  ;  interpolated  them  with 
his    trochaics,     burlesqued    them    in    his 
**  Margites,"    and    imitated    them    in    the 
*•  Psaromachia,"     the     ''  Arachnomachia," 
and  the  "  Geranomachia," — that  is,  he  and 
others  did.     Then  Melissus,  a  descendant 
of  Homer,  and  contemporary  of  Herodotus 
and   Dioscorides,  of  Chios,  born  at  least 
before  his  death,  commented  upon  Homer's 
works  ;  and  Herodotus  wrote,  as  I  believe, 
and,  as  is   certainly   highly   probable,    the 
*^Life  of  Lives."     And   if  Melissus,   the 
son  of  Ithagenes,   was  the  descendant  of 
Melissigenes,  two  of  whose  ancestors  bore 
that   very   uncommon   name,   we  may  be 
sure  that   in   the  time  of  Herodotus,  the 
well  of  orthodox  Homerology,  that  in  the 
time  of  Adrian  reached  its  very  nadir  of 
corruption,  was  (as,   indeed,  we  find  it  in 
**The  Life")  pure  from  all  debasing  alloy 
of    pseudo- Homeric    or    hyper  -  sceptical 
heresy.      And    we    have    already    noted 
Demodamas,  palpably  a  descendant  of  the 
son  of  Demasagoras,  as  one  of  the  authori- 
ties upon  the  works  of  Homer  that  He- 
rodotus,   his    countryman,     consulted,    in 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer.     429 

writing  his  ''  History."  What  more  pro- 
bable than  that  he  borrowed  largely  from 
him,  as  well  as  from  Melissus,  in  writing 
his  "  Life "  .^  What  better  authorities 
could  he  have  .-^  And  Dioscorides  may 
be  supposed  to  have  written  some  years 
after  to  correct  the  patent  defects  of  the 
book, — its  utter  want  of  philosophical 
insight,  its  somewhat  meagre  literary  in- 
formation, and  the  absence  of  all  refer- 
ence to  the  Chian  portion  of  the  life, — 
a  deplorable  hiatus,  which  Dioscorides, 
as  a  Chian,  was,  doubtless,  well  qualified 
to  supply.  And  who  more  likely  to  have 
written  "  The  Life  "  than  he  that  in  prose 
celebrated  the  triumph  of  Greece  over 
Asia,  even  as  He  did  in  verse  ? 

But  the  barbarous  dialect  in  which 
"The  Life,"  addressed,  as  it  was,  mainly 
to  the  countrymen  of  Herodotus,  was 
originally  written  and  preserved  for  some 
six  centuries,  may  account  for  its  being 
so  completely  overlooked  during  the 
classical  period  of  Greek  literature.  But, 
as  time  went  on,  the  two  Homers  eot 
more  and  more  confounded,  and  everv 
form  of  heresy  obscured  the  pure  gospel 
of   Homeric   orthodoxy.     At  last,   in  the 


430     The  Complete  Life  of  Homer, 

time  of  Adrian,  when  that  emperor 
inquired  of  the  birth  and  native  place  of 
our  poet,  the  Oracle  answered  him  thus  : — 

**  Ithaca  was  his  native  seat,  his  sire 
Telemachus,  and  Nestor's  daughter  fair 
By  mournful  Chloris— Epicaste— bare 
The  siren  bard  of  whom  you  here  inquire." 

And  now  an  anonymous  writer  took  it 
upon  him  to  publish  Lesches's  brilliant 
and  delightful  idyl  *'The  Agon,  or 
Contest  between  Homer  and  Hesiod," 
with  introduction,  conclusion,^  and  con- 
necting remarks  of  his  own,  in  prose, — 
much  like  Croker  s  on  Boswell's  "  Life  of 
Johnson," — and,  amongst  the  rest,  the 
lately-received      so-called      oracle      from 

Delphi. 

Heterodoxy  could  now  go  no  farther, 
and  Aristeides  of  Smyrna  stepped  for- 
ward in  the  cause  of  orthodox  Homer- 
ology,  and  wrote  his  '*  Monody,"  &c. 
And  at  this  time  it  is  in  the  highest 
degree  probable  that  Herodotus's  ^*Life" 
was  edited  from  the  original  work  by  one 
Hermogenes.  Dr.  J.  Schmidt  propounds 
this  view  with  considerable  diffidence,  but 
it  commends  itself  to  my  judgment  as  in 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer.     431 

the  highest  degree  probable.  Hermogenes 
was  a  physician  of  Smyrna,  author  of 
"Smyrna,"  in  two  books;  "  The  Wisdom 
of  Homer,"  in  one ;  "  The  Country  of 
Homer,"  in  one.  He  was,  in  all  proba- 
bility, the  Hermogenes  that  was  the 
physician  of  Hadrian,  of  whom  Dio  Cassius 
speaks.*  He  would  naturally  be  offended^ 
as  a  courtier,  at  the  absurd  insult  the 
aged  emperor  had  just  undergone.  For 
insult  it  surely  was.  The  god  had  already 
spoken,  saying : — 

"  los  is  the  native  land  of  thy  mother,"  &:c. 

a  thousand  years  ago,  and  this  answer  had 
been  inscribed  on  a  marble  pillar  within  his- 
shrine.  ''  Who  was  Adrian,  that  he  should 
ask  the  same  question  again  that  Homer 
himself  had  put  before  him,  884  B.C.  or 
thereabouts  .'^ — a  vain  pedantic  poetaster. 
Answer,  then,  that  golden  ass  according  to 
his  folly.  Fill  his  mouth  with  chaff,  and 
his  ears  with  bosh.  And,  for  his  imperti- 
nent sirens  and  sphinxes  and  the  rest  of 
it,  give  him  an  '  Alice's  Adventures  in 
Wonderland '  version  of  Hermesianax's 
trash." 

*  Lib.  xix.  21. 


432      The  Complete  Life  of  Homer, 

Thus  argued  the  god,  and  thus  he  an- 
swered the  prince.  Now,  could  a  more 
tempting  opportunity  offer  for  exposing 
his  too-iong-tolerated  humbug  ?  Accord- 
ing to  the  sacerdotal  myth,  Homer  having 
no  fatherland,  and  his  motherland  being 
los,  and  his  mother's  grave  and  his  own 
being  at  los,  and  his  bones  being  at  los, 
— oh,  these  bones  !  (the  ancients  thought 
no  end  of  these  wretched  bones), — albeit 
born  at  Smyrna  (even  the  oracular  impu- 
dence of  Oriental  priestcraft  and  Tzetzes, 
in  the  midst  of  his  astounding  blunders, 
never  dared  gainsay  that), — Smyrna  had 
forfeited  every  claim  upon  him, — he  was 
every  inch  an  Ian.  And  if  an  Ian,  then  the 
god's,  no  less  as  man  than  poet,  as  the  fol- 
lowing remarks  will  serve,  I  trust,  to  prove. 
In  fabulously-remote  times,  Phoenician 
sailors  came  to  los,  and  called  it ''  Phcenike.'* 
May  not  these  Phoenician  , sailors  have 
been  Cadmus  and  his  little  band,  seeing 
that  los  is  in  as  straight  a  line  as  crow 
ever  flew  between  Boeotia  and  Phoenicia  ? 
We  all  know  the  Myth  of  Apollo  ;  but  we 
do  not  all  know  that  it,  like  that  of  the  Birth 
of  Minerva,  is  merely  a  beautiful  allegory. 
But  so  it  is.      Leto,  i.e..  Darkness,  being 


The  Complete  Life  of  Ho77ier,    433 

with  child  by  Omniscience,  leaning  against 
a  palm-tree,  brought  forth  the  God  of  Song. 
The  palm-tree  {Phoinix)  is  the  great  Phoe- 
nician discovery  of  the  Higher  Speech. 
Not  before  the  Higher  Speech,  but  after, 
did  Adam  chant  his  first  note  of  love  to 
Eve.  Not  before  the  Higher  Speech,  but 
long  after,  did  Homer  chant  his  *'  Iliad." 
And  los  was  the  first  point  of  Hellas  the 
Phoenician  Columbuses  came  to.  And 
here,  first,  did  Hellenic  eye  gaze  upon  the 
Great  Discovery.  Therefore  was  los 
peculiarly  sacred  to  Delian  Apollo,  hardly 
less  so  than  Rhenaea.  And  their  three 
gods  were  the  same  :  Jove,  with  the  goat 
upon  his  shield  ;  Pallas  (as  we  see  by  their 
coinage)  ;  and,  above  all,  Apollo.  And 
these  were  Homer's  three  also,  as  we  see 
in  divers  places  throughout  his  works  and 
in  the  legend  (see  Vitruvius  and  Suidas) 
of  ^t^  punishment  inflicted  upon  Zoilus, 
the  blaspheii^rof  St.  Homer,  by  Olympia, 
Egypt,  and  Siri'yrna ;  the  first  sacred  to 
Jove,  as  the  seat  of  his  games  ;  the  second 
to  Tritonis,  as  her  native  land  ;  and  the 
third  to  Apollo,  as  his  poet's  birth-place. 
And  the  secondary,  if  not  primary,  mean- 
ing  of  his   poem,   ''The    Goat,"  was  the 

2    Y 


434     ^^^^  Complete  Life  of  Homer. 

scheme  of  the  goat-nurtured  god  for  the 
destruction  of  the  Heroic  world,  with  its 
dismal  refrain  found  in  the  ''  Ilias  Mikra," 
and  repeated  therefrom  in  the  "  Ilias 
Magna  "  : — 

"  And  the  will  of  Jove  was  accomplished." 

But   this    is   not   all.       Delos   had    many 
aliases,    all    of    which    connect    her    with 
Paros  and  los.      (i)   Pelasgia,  i,e,,  she  was 
of  Pelasgic  or  Arcadian  origin.     (2)   Orty- 
gia,  from  her  quails ;  Lagia,  from  her  hares; 
Cerrha,    from   her    horned    animals;    and 
Cynsethus,     or    Cynthus,    from    her   dogs 
{Mount  Cynthus,  in  Delos,  contracted  from 
Cyneethus,  merely  means  "Dog's  Rise") — 
in  a  word,  a  veritable  Arcadian  island.   And 
we  have  seen  how  Homer  addresses  the 
ian  fisher-lads  as  ''Arcadian  huntsmen," 
and  the  reader  will   remember  that  Paros, 
the  contiguous  island,  from  which  beyond 
all  doubt  los  was  peopled,    was   colonised 
by  Arcadians.     Nor  will  he  forget  the  close 
intimacy  duly  recorded  in  the   "  Hymn  to 
Hermes,"  between   Apollo  and  that  deity. 
Nor  that  Rhenaea,  Apollo's  "happy  hunt- 
ing-ground," was    "weasel-less."     Again, 
Paros,  and  therefore  los,  was  peopled  from 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer.     435 

Crete,  the  birthplace  of  Jupiter,  and  there- 
fore all  three  islands  were  especially  sacred 
to  that  divinity.  Lastly,  we  read  in 
Lesches's  "Agon,"  that  when  Homer  the 
Younger  was  at  los,  "The  lonians  gave 
hmi  the  citizenship,  and  the  Delians  copied 
out  the  "  Hymn  of  Hymns,"  which  he  had 
just  been  reciting,  on  gypsum,  and  conse- 
crated it  in  the  temple  of  Artemis.  And 
this,  again,  shows  with  what  propriety 
Delos  was  called  Lagia,  Cerrha,  &c.,  and, 
what  is  more  germane  to  the  matter  in 
hand,  that  los  was  half  Ionian,  half 
Delian ;  in  other  words,  under  the  exclu- 
sive patronage,  in  secular  matters,  of  the 
Goddess  of  Athens  ;  in  spiritual  matters, 
of  the  God  of  Delphi  :— 

"  Oh,  Pan  !  God  of  sweet  Arcadee, 
And  guardian  of  the  sacred  places, 
Companion  of  the  mighty  She, 

And  sweet  care  of  the  holy  Graces," — 

sings  Pindar  in  one  of  his  finest  fragments  ; 
and  it  was  a  Pan  or  Satyr,  according  to  the 
legend  of  los,  that  was  Homer's  father. 
This  appears  clearly  from  the  passage  in 
Aristotle,  quoted  by  the  pseudo-Plu- 
tarchus,    in    which    the    sage   of  Stageira 

2    F   2 


436     The  Complete  Life  of  Homer, 

speaks  of  him  as  a  Deity  of  the  species 
that  dances  with  the  Muses  (rivo^  8ai/xovo? 
Tis^v  (Ttjy^opsrjTcov  Mou(rai^).  He  means 
nymphs,  but  he  says  "Muses,"  because 
Kretheis  was  the  mother  of  Homer,  and 
he  was  said  to  be  the  son  of  the  Muse 
Calliope,  and  who  the  divine  beings  were 
that  danced  with  the  nymphs  we  learn 
from  Horaces — 

**  Nympharumque  leves  cum  Satyris  chori  "  ; 

and  that  Homer's  mother  was  a  nymph, 

we  read  in  Lucian  and  others.      los  was, 

therefore,  no  less  Arcadian  than  Delos,  as 

we   see   yet    further,    from    the   fact   that 

Homer's  pseudo-mother  fled  in  her  shame 

to  itgina  (Goatby),  and  from  the  further 

fact  that  the  goat  was  sacrificed  at  Horner's 

tomb  at  los.      From  all  this  we  may  infer 

the  identity  of  blood,   as  we  have  already 

that  of  religious  feeling,  between  these  four 

interesting  and  closely-contiguous  islets, — 

Delos,  Rheneea,  Paros,  and  los,— and  that 

the  last  was  not  mentioned  in  the  ''  Hymn 

of  Hymns,"  not  because  it  was  not  sacred 

to  Apollo,  but  because,  previously  to  the 

death  of  Homer,   it  was  utterly  insignifi- 


T/ie  Complete  Life  of  Homer,    437 

cant  and  unknown, — a  mere  petty  depen- 
dency, in  fact. 

To  strike,  then,  at  the  Ian  legend  was  to 
avenge  the  insulted  emperor  upon  the 
haughty  Pythoness.  Just  what  Hermo- 
genes  would  wish  to  do  as  a  court- 
physician.  It  would  also  be  to  vindicate 
the  faded  glory  of  the  Ionian  cities,  and 
especially  of  Smyrna.  Just  what  Hermo- 
genes  would  wish  to  do  as  a  patriotic 
Smyrniote.  And,  lastly,  what  he  was  fully 
able  to  do  as  the  author  of  the  three  works 
already  spoken  of.  Also  those  two  criticce 
^r/zr^i",  '' Strobilos  "  and  "  Konos,"  in  the 
twentieth  section  of  *'  The  Life,"  are  just  a 
physician's  touches.  And  Galen  makes 
mention  both  of  him  and  them,  doubtless 
in  reference  to  this  well-known  passage. 
We  may,  therefore,  infer  Galen's  authority 
for  Hermogenes  being  the  editor  of  "  The 
Life."  Lastly,  the  Greek  epigram  con- 
gratulates Aristeides  on  hewing  put  an 
end  to  the  dispute  amongst  the  cities  of 
Ionia  concerning  the  birthplace  of  Homer, 
and  established  for  ever  the  claim  of 
Smyrna  to  that  high  distinction.  But 
surely  Aristeides's  feeble  jDerformances  do 
no  such  thing,  but  the  previous  works  of 


438     The  Complete  Life  of  Homer, 

Hermogenes,  and  above  all,  *'  The  Life," 
may  well  have  done  so,  albeit  the  prudent 
and  courtly  physician  (Aristeides  being  a 
very  great  man)  was  willing  to  let  him 
have  the  credit  and  the  brunt  of  it,  priest 
matched  with  priest,  Vulcan  with  Phoebus. 
Query,  by  the  way,  is  it  not  highly  pro- 
bable that  Hermogenes  himself  artfully 
wrote  this  most  undeservedly  adulatory 
epigram  ? 

What  renders  the  above  theory  yet 
more  probable,  is  that  Galen,  who  was 
born  about  the  same  year  as  Aristeides, 
went  to  study  at  Smyrna  under  the  cele- 
brated physician,  Pelops,  about  150  a.d., 
in  whose  house  he  resided  some  time  to 
attend  his  lectures,  and  those  of  Albinus. 
This,  of  course,  might  well  bring  him 
acquainted  with  Hermogenes. 

So  much  for  the  life  of  our  poet.  Next, 
as  reofards  his  works.  We  cumber  Shake- 
speare  with  Titus  Andronicus,  Pyrocles, 
and  the  two  first  parts  of  *'  Henry  VI.," 
though  Titus  Andronicus  is  certainly  not 
Shakespeare's,  and  only  a  small  residuum 
of  the  two  Henrys.  How  is  it  we  pursue 
so  different  a  course  with  respect  to  the 
disputed    works   of   Homer  ?     Even    ad- 


The  Complete  Life  of  Ho7ner.    439 

mitting  the  ''  Batrachomyomachia,"  the 
*' Hymns,"  the  "Epigrams,"  and  the 
'*  Fragments,"  to  be  none  of  them  his, 
still  they  are  so  small  in  quantity  that  they 
would  not  appreciably  increase  the  size 
and  price  of  the  volume.  And  though  I 
believe  that  Homer  the  Younger,  Hesiod, 
and  others,  wrote  all  the  "  Hymns,"  but 
three  or  four  at  most,  still  I  have  very 
little  doubt  that  the  three  or  four  are  at 
least  pardy  his.  Nothing  can  be  well 
conceived  more  utterly  trivial  than  the 
arguments  adduced  for  pronouncing  this 
or  that  ancient  work  spurious.  Thus,  in 
spite  of  the  overwhelming  mass  of  evidence 
in  its  favour,  one  'Mearned  writer"  pro- 
nounces the  '' Margites"  "undoubtedly 
spurious,  because  the  word  epistato  found 
in  it  is  Attic  Greek."  Yet  Plato  quotes 
the  passage  with  approval,  and  without 
even  a  doubt  of  its  authenticity,*  and 
Homer  himself  writes — 

The  absurd  grounds  on  which  the  ''  Ba- 
trachomyomachia "     has     been     ''abjudi- 

*  Alcib.,  ii.  p.  147a.  t  II.,  p.  671. 


440     The  Complete  Life  of  Homer, 

cated,"    the   reader   has   already   seen  in 
Chapter  VII. 

But,  as  word-catching   pseudo-criticism 
is  the  great  snare  of  the  learned,  so  the 
sacred  apophthegm,   "  By    their   fruits    ye 
shall  know  them,"  is  the  great  snare  of  the 
unlearned.     I  take  up  Homer's  **  Hymn 
to  Hermes."     I  cannot  but  recognise  its 
exceeding  beauty.     I   remember  also  that 
Shelley,   a  severe,  and  at  the  same  time 
exquisite,  critic,  has  thought  it  worthy  of 
translating,    and    translating    very    char- 
mingly.    I  read  the  first  fragment  of  "  The 
Cypria."     It  unquestionably  surpasses  the 
prelude  of  the  second  book  of  the  '*  Iliad." 
And  Virgil  had    it  vaguely  in    his    mind 
when  he  wrote  his  magnificent  description 
of  the   ''Bay  of  Carthage  at   Midnight." 
Am  I  to  infer  then  that  that  splendid  piece 
and  this  splendid  morceau  are  Homer's  ? 
Not  necessarily.    Shakespeare  never  wrote 
a  finer  scene  than  *'  The  Death  of  Beau- 
fort,"  or  a  sweeter  madrigal  than   **  The 
Passionate  Shepherd,"  yet  both  are  now 
universally   admitted    not   to   be    Shake- 
speare's.     On  the   contrary,   shall   I   pro- 
nounce   the    Fragments    of  the      *'  Ilias 
Mikra  "  spurious  in  defiance  of  the  distinct 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer,    441 

assertion  of  ''The  Life,"  and  the  obvious 
quotation  of  Aristophanes,  because  of  their 
flatness  and  insipidity,  or  the  "  Batracho- 
myomachia,"  because,  owing  to  the  cha- 
racter of  the  theme  and  of  the  metre,  and 
of  the  genius  of  Homer  himself,  it  is  hardly 
worthy  of  him  .^  Certainly  not.  Horace's 
Odes  to  the  Gods  are  not  worth  the  paper 
they  are  written  upon  ;  and  "  Pyrocles," 
though  undoubtedly  Shakespeare's,  is 
utterly  worthless. 

Again,  when  a  poet  lives  long,  and 
has  a  chequered  life,  and  travels  far, 
and  thinks  deeply,  reads  everything,  and 
converses  with  '*all  sorts  and  conditions  of 
men "  to  be  found  between  Smyrna  and 
Iberia,  we  must  expect  his  later  to  differ 
most  materially  in  an  infinite  variety  of 
points  from  his  earlier  works.  The  argu- 
ments, therefore,  drawn  from  any  such  dis- 
crepancies, were  they  thrice  as  great  as 
they  are  against  the  authenticity  of  the 
''Odyssey,"  and  the  Homeric  "Hymns," 
are  utterly  frivolous.  And  they  are  even 
more  stupid  still  as  against  the  authenticity 
of  the  later  works  of  Hesiod.  His  life 
naturally  divided  itself  in  two  dissimilar 
portions,  the  ante-Homeric  and  the  post- 


442     The  Complete  Life  of  Hofner, 

Homeric  period.  Only  pedantic  conceit, 
the  most  pigheaded,  can  doubt  that  every 
line  in  the  edition  of  Goettlingius  is  the 
emanation  of  the  self-same  brain,  and  has 
the  very  ring  of  true  Hesiodic  coin.  But 
the  intense  study  of  that  encyclopaedia,  of  all 
the  learning  of  his  time, — the  works  of 
Homer  the  Elder, — added  to  the  carefully- 
hoarded  fruits  of  his  own  reseaches  and 
wider  experience  of  men  and  cities,  no 
doubt  more  and  more  largely  coloured  his 
later  works,  from  his  first  making  acquaint- 
ance with  the  pseudo-Homer  in  884  B.C.  to 
his  death,  which,  according  to  my  interpre- 
tation of  the  language  of  Eusebius,  would 
seem  to  have  been  about  854  u.c.  I 
gather  from  that  venerable  writer  that  he 
became  distinguished  about  ten  or  twelve 
years  before  the  legislation  of  Lycurgus, 
that  is  854  or  856  B.C.,  and  I  presume  that 
about  that  time  he  died,  and  the  celebrated 
edition  de  luxe  on  lead  of  his  great  work 
was  published  in  commemoration  of  him 
by  his  admiring  countrymen. 

An  Englishman  does  not  cease  to  be  an 
Englishman  by  being  born  in  India,  and 
spending  three-fourths  of  his  life  there, 
and    Homer   was    not    the    less   a  Greek 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer,     443 

because  he  never  set  foot  in  Europe  ex- 
cept in  the  course  of  his  voyages.     All  his 
blood  was  from  thence  ;  all  his  vast  stores 
of  knowledge  were  from  thence ;  his  heart 
and  soul  were  there ;  the  sacred  bones  of 
his   godlike   ancestors,  from   Kretheus   to. 
Deucalion,  from  Danaus  to  Inachus,  from 
Theoclymenus    to    Amythaon,    and  from 
Maeon  to  Orpheus,  were  all  there.     That 
was  the  true  native  land,  and  the  glorious 
deeds  of  its  heroes  the  history,  alike  of  the 
poet  and  of  his  audience,  go  wherever  he 
would.     So,  when  Dr.  Ihne  says,  ''  Homer, 
if  his  works  had  first  originated  in  Asia, 
would    not    have   compared    Nausicaa   to 
Artemis  walking  on  Taygetus  or  Eriman 
thus"    (^'Odyss.,"    vi.    102),    he   talks    as 
groundlessly  as  if  he  were  to  say  such  and 
such  a  letter  could  not  have  been  written 
by  one  Englishman  in  India  to  another  if 
it  spoke  of  the  wood  overhanging  the  sea 
at  Weston,  or  King  Bladud's  pigs,  or  the 
school    on   the    Malvern    hills    where    he 
meant   to  send  his  boys.      He  might  just 
as  well  argue  that  Horace  could  not  have 
written   the  twenty-first   Ode  of  his  First 
Book,  in    which    he    speaks    of    Diana's 
habitat    precisely    as     Homer    does.       A 


444     ^/'^'  Complete  Life  of  Homer, 

learned  New  Zealander  might  just  as  well 
argue  that  Wolff  and  Co.  never  existed.  I 
have  indeed  written  this  Life  to  very  little 
purpose  if  the  reader  is  not  prepared  to 
admit  that  Homer,  being  what  he  was, 
iiiay  very  well  have  known  so  much  of  the 
goddess  that  with  her  own  sacred  hands 
brought  him  into  the  world. 

Another  fruitful  pretence  for  making  the 
most  terrible  havoc  upon  the  works  of  our 
venerable  one,  we  unhappily  owe  to  the 
critical  exegesis  of  the  Stagyrite.  But  I 
no  more  believe  that  either  the  *'  Iliad" 
and  the  "Odyssey"  are  complete  works, 
and  entitled  to  special  admiration  as  such, 
than  I  believe  in  the  now  happily  ex- 
ploded dramatic  unities.  They  have  both 
-magnificent  beginnings,  but  no  true  con- 
-clusions  that  I  can  see,  any  more  than 
Byron's  *'  Don  Juan  "  or  Ovid's  *'  Fasti." 
*' Paradise  Lost"  has,  and  so  has  the 
"'  ^neid,"  but  they  have  not.  They  are 
simply  two  splendid  instalments  of  one 
vast,  uncompleted  whole,  beginning  with 
'the  egg  that  Leda  laid  and  ending  with 
the  fish-bone  that  made  Telegonus  a 
•^parricide.  I  should  not  care  to  advance  a 
view  that  so  many  will  pooh-pooh  as  quite 


The  Complete  Life  of  Hoyner.    445 

untenable,  but  for  the  mischievous  use 
that  Ihne  and  his  likes  have  made  of  the 
received  view  as  most  innocently  handed 
down  from  the  Stagyrite.  I  am  quite 
willing  to  admit  them  to  be  as  complete- 
as  you  please,  if  you  will  only  not  cut 
pieces  away  from  them  to  make  them 
completer.  But  rather  than  you  should 
do  that  I  will  abide  by  my  heresy,  which 
at  worst  is  far  less  heinous  than  yours.. 
The  traveller  was  wrong,  perhaps,  in  com- 
plaining that  Procrustes's  bed  was  too- 
short  for  him,  but  Procrustes  was  cer- 
tainly wronger  in  cutting  his  legs  off.  1 
like  not  Zoilus,  but  Zenodotus  I  like  even 
less.  Heracleitus  was  bad  enough,  but 
Ihne  is  worse  still.  The  Chorizontes. 
were  more  damnable  heretics  even  than 
the  Platonists. 

Again,  some  critics  even  think  it  enough 
to  say  Stasinus  wrote  the  ''  Cypria," 
Pigres  wrote  ''  The  Margites,"  inferring,, 
as  a  matter  of  course,  that  Homer  wrote 
neither  work.  But  it  is  not  by  any  means 
a  matter  of  course.  Hesiod,  Thestorides,. 
Cinaethon,  Diodorus  of  Erythrae,  Ion, 
and  Homer  all  wrote  an  ''  Ilias  Mikra." 
Stasinus,  Hegesinus,  and  Homer  all  wrote 


44^    The  Complete  Life  of  Homer, 

a  *'Cypria."  Arctinus  the  Milesian,  the 
pseudo- Homer,  Antimachus  and  Statins, 
all  wrote  a  ''  Thebaid."  Eumelus,  Arc- 
tinus, Telesis  of  Methymna,  and  Museeus, 
all  wrote  a  ''  Titanomachia."  Epimenides, 
Orpheus,  Apollonius,  and  Valerius  Flaccus, 
all  wrote  an  '' Argonautica."  And  so  on, 
and  so  on.  It  cannot  have  escaped  even 
the  most  careless  and  forgetful  reader  that 
the  whole  epico-tragic  cycle  from  the  War 
of  the  Giants  to  the  death  of  Ulysses, 
formed,  and  still  forms  to  this  day,  the 
theme  of  poet  after  poet  without  end. 
Even  as  Juvenal  sings, — 


*'  Hsec  eadem  accipies  a  summo  minimoque  poeta 


"  From  Trinity  to  smallest  beer, 
These  self-same  things  you  still  will  hear. 


/i  '» 


»» 


Still  Tennyson  sings  to  us  of  Teiresias, 
and  Browning  of  Agamemnon,  and  Morris 
of  the  Argonauts,  and  Swinburne  of  the 
Great  Caledonian  Boar  Hunt. 

The  loss  sustained  by  literature  from  the 
rash  judgments  of  the  learned,  mainly  on  one 
or  other  of  the  above  grounds,  is  simply 
terrible.  Sophocles  chances  to  quote  one 
of  Homer's  Epigrams.     Athenaeus  at  once 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer.    447 

assumes  that  Sophocles  wrote  it  himself, 
and  that  it  has  been  wrongly  ascribed 
to  Homer.  This  of  itself  would  not 
matter  ;  the  Epigram  is,  perhaps.  Homer's 
very  worst,  and,  indeed,  I  am  happy  to 
think,  is  not  Homer  s.  But,  unfortunately, 
from  this  trifling  incident  the  inference  has 
been  drawn  that  the  Epigrams,  as  a  whole, 
are  of  the  very  most  doubtful  authenticity. 
On  such  worthless  grounds  are  we  told 
that  Euryphon  wrote  "Medea";  lophon, 
*'  Antigone  "  ;  Bacon,  ''  Shakespeare  "  ; 
and  Pigres,  ''  Homer" ;  that  '*  Henry  VI H." 
is  not  the  work  of  Shakespeare  ;  nor  ''  Iphi- 
genia  in  Tauris"  of  Euripides. 

Oh,  why  should  the  life  of  a  man  be  so 
sacred,  and  the  life  of  all  that  is  most  pre- 
cious in  man, — his  words,  his  thoughts,  his 
writings,  his  lifework,  and  his  history, — 
so  wretchedly  cheap  !  The  most  precious 
of  lives  and  the  remains  of  the  greatest  of 
poets,  the  hyper-sceptical  school  has  done 
all  it  can  to  kill,  on  grounds  the  most  ludi- 
crously trivial.  The  venerable  events  of 
the  early  history  of  mankind,  from  the  time 
of  Inachus  to  the  Wars  of  the  Roses,  are 
perishing  beneath  its  felon  hands  by  shoals. 
Like  Saturn    of  old,   a   veritable  literary 


448     The  Complete  Life  of  Hovier, 

Dragon  of  Wantley,  it  has  swallowed  up  a 
thousand  years  and  more  of  Greek  history, 
and  all  the  materials  for  a  **  Life  of  Homer  " 
collected  by  antiquity  with  such  an  un- 
wearied infinity  of  reverent  toil,  and  left 
nothing  but  Dead  Sea  ashes. 

Half-knowledge  is  better  than  no  know- 
ledge.   The  positive  historian  that  repro- 
duces  history    from    materials    the    most 
worthless  is  worthy  of  immeasurably  more 
honour  than  the    negative   historian   who 
only  enters  the  sacred  garden  of  history  to 
poison  all  its  lovely  flowers  with  the  me- 
phitic  breath  of  his  hyper-scepticism.    The 
one  is  a  bee  extracting  sweet  honey  even 
from  the  netde,  the  other  a  spider  seeing 
in  the  gayest  children  of  Flora  only  props 
for  his  dingy   fly-trap.     Any  litde   street 
Arab  could  smash  one  of  the  windows  in 
Aladdin's  magic  palace,  but  all  the  king's 
treasures  and  all  the  shops  of  the  jewellers 
could  not  fill  up  the  gap.     So  it  is  easy 
work  to  strike  hundreds  and  hundreds  of 
lines  out  of  Homer,  in  defiance  of  Lucian's* 
''They  are  all  his,*' — meaning,  ''There  they 
are,  and  there  let  them  be,  lest,  in  rooting 
up  the  tares,  you  root  up  the  wheat  also"  ; 
but  all  the  learned  combined  have  been 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer.    449 

unable  to  patch  up  the  four  commencing 
lines  of  the  "  Cypria,"  even  decendy.  Good 
and  evil,  tares  and  wheat,  will  ever  grow 
up  side  by  side  in  this  world  ;  but  we  are 
not  to  gather  up  the  tares,  lest  we  root  up 
also  the  wheat  with  them.  And,  therefore, 
Lucian  says,  *' They  are  all  his,"— meaning^ 
I'  There  they  are, and  there  let  them  be,  lest, 
in  striking  out  diat  which  is  spurious,  you 
strike  out  also  that  which  is  genuine.'' 

In  conclusion,  unquestionably  to  many 
individual  hyper-sceptics  the  literary  world 
is  highly  indebted ;  still,  in  the  school 
they  belong  to,  there  are  the  four  fol- 
lowing most  reprehensible  "marks  of  the 
beast." 

1.  Its  terrible  depredations  upon  the 
vast  store  of  knowledge  that  our  fore- 
fathers have  bequeathed  us.  Through  it 
we  know  much  less  of  Homer  and  Shake- 
speare, for  example,  than  we  did  as  boys. 

2.  Its  overweening  arrogance  in  setting 
the  mere  ipse  dixit  of  one  poor  gene- 
ration of  Teutons,  thousands  of  miles 
away,  both  in  point  of  time  and  space, 
frorn  the  living  sources  of  knowledge, 
against  the  unanimous  opinion  of  all  the 
ages,  based  upon  the  absolute  certainty  of 

2  G 


450     The  Complete  Life  of  Homer. 

the  ancient  Greeks   that  drank    their  fill 
thereat. 

3.  Its  unfair  application  of  the  argu- 
mentum  ad  z'erecnndia?)iy  "  If  you  believe 
that  Homer  wrote, — above  all,  that  he 
wrote  the  *  Hymn  of  Hymns,' — we  will 
cast  you  out  of  the  Synagogue,  we  will 
strike  your  name  off  the  list  of  the  Learned 
Ring." 

4.  Its  dishonest  reasoning  in  a  circle. 
''  Herodotus's  '  Life  of  Lives,'  in  Wes- 
termann  passim,  Hesiod's  '  Fragments,' 
and  Homer's  '  Batrachomyomachia,'  are 
against  us,  therefore  they  are  spurious  and 
valueless,  and  so  are  those  passages  in 
Plutarch's  '  Moralia,'  that  are  liable  to  the 
same  objection." 

5.  The  utterly  insufficient  grounds  on 
which  it  has  abjudicated  some  fourth  or 
fifth  part  of  the  venerable  remains  of 
antiquity,  and  largely  adulterated  the  rest, 
at  its  own  sweet  will  and  pleasure. 

6.  Its  sterilising  influences  upon  even 
the  finest  intellects,  as  manifested  in  the 
astounding  misreadings  with  which  it  has 
marred  the  Parian  Marble  almost  more 
than  Time  has,  in  utter  defiance  both  of 
printer  and  stonemason. 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer.     451 

7.  Its  scandalous  injustice  to  a  noble 
race.  It  tacitly  sets  down  the  Greeks  as 
a  nation  of  the  most  consummate  liars  •  for 
unless  they  are  not  to  be  believed  on  their 
oath,  even  when  they  have  nothing  to 
Sri^  P^'J^^y^  ^t  has  absolutely  no  locus 

8.  Its  disenchanting  tendencies.    I  quite 
acquit  It  of  being  dangerous  to  religion.  A 
school-boy  will  as  soon   upset  the  Monu- 
ment with  his  penny  popgun  as  hyper-scep- 
ticism  will   upset  any  creed  whatever  as 
long  as  the  people  remain  attached  to  it 
1  eople  will  be  cheated  out  of  nothing  they 
really  care  for,  so  lightly  ;  and  the  success 
hyper-scepticism  has  had  in  the  domain  of 
learning  shows,  alas  !  how  cheap  we  hold 
It    btill,  us  tendency  is  to  take  the  delicate 
boom  off  the  peach,-the  chaste  aroma  off 
all  that  is  sublime  and  venerable.      Hence 
doubtless    the  valiant  stand   against  it  of 
the  gifted  author  of  -  Homeric  Studies  " 


2    CJ 


CHAPTER  XI. 

ADDENDA. 

Proclus  and  Suidas  agree  in  stating 
that  the  "  Kuklos  "  was  attributed  to  our 
poet  by  pre-Aristotehan  antiquity.  It  com- 
prises the  -Cypria";  the'^Aix";  the^Ilias 
Mikra"  (Part  I.,  from  the  sailing  of  the 
fleet  to  the  death  of  Palamedes  ;  Part  II., 
from  the  death  of  Palamedes  to  that  of 
Achilles,  subsequently  enlarged  to  the 
''Iliad,"  and  the  '^Amazonia";  and  Part 
III.,  from  the  death  of  Achilles  to  the  fall 
of  Troy) ;  the  "  Nostoi ";  the  "  Odyssey  "  ; 
and  the  "  Telegonia." 

We  have  already  seen  (page  172)  that 
the  *•  Telegonia"  was  actually  a  part  of 
the  ''  Odyssey  "  ;  exactly  in  the  same  way 
the    ''Amazonia"    was    a    part    of    the 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer.     453 

"  Iliad,"  the  first  two  lines  of  it   (all   we 
have   left)  being    originally,  as  we   learn 
from    the    Scholiast,    the    last   two    lines 
thereof.      Whether  Homer  ever  enlarged 
Parts  I.  and  III.  of  his  -  Ilias  Mikra,"  as 
he  enlarged  Part  II.,  we  have  no  means  of 
knowing.     But  a  careful    study   of  pages 
34.  Z^-l>  and  49,   50,  of  Kinkel's  *'  Epi- 
corum  Gn-ecorum  Fragmenta,"  and  what 
I    have    myself    advanced    here    and    in 
Chapter  VII.,  should  satisfy  the  thoughtful 
reader   that   the  Homeric   "Kuklos"  was 
a  carefully-constructed,  closely-interconca- 
tenated  whole,  and  wholly  disabuse  him  of 
the  Aristotelian  fallacy  that  the  ''  Iliad"  and 
the  ''Odyssey"  are  two  distinct  epics,  each 
complete  in  itself,  and  not  merely  the  two 
most  important  sections  of  a  vast  cyclic 
poem  that  Homer  left  unfinished. 

^  The   Iliadean    ''  Kuklos  "  ended  with  a 
display  of  extraordinary  power  : — 

"  The  torches  were  lit,  in  each  hand  Hfted  high, 

And,    mingled  with  smoke,  the  fire  redden'd  the 
sky.* 

*  ♦  •  ♦  # 

Torn  from  the  nurse's  breast,  the  babe  doth  fall, 
Held  by  the  foot,  and  flung  down  off"  the  wall, 


Ep.  Gr.  Frag.,  p.  74. 


454      ^/^^'  Co})ipletc  Life  of  Homer. 


(( 


And  to  the  ships,  to  shudder  in  his  bed, 

Tear-blind  Andromache  grim  Pyrrhus  led.* 
#  #  #  #  * 

In  vain  Achilles  and  fierce  Ajax  died  ; 

'Tis  wise  Ulysses,  and  he  only, '  cried 

The  King  of  Men,  '  that  lit  yon  tow'ring  flame, 

And  earn'd  himself  and  us  immortal  fame : 

His  myriad  wiles,  by  Pallas  taught,  have  ta'en 

The  God-built  city  they  assail'd  in  vain.  '  "f 


A  noble  passage  quoted  by  one  ancient 
author  after  another,  %  and  alluded  to  by 
Homer  himself  in  the  poem  it  so  neatly 
introduces — the  Odyssean  sequel  to  the 
Iliadean  "  Kuklos."§  And  compare  with  it 
the  language  of  the  Epigrammatists  : — 

"  Thy  plaint  we  still  hear,  O  Andromache  ; 
Troy  from  its  base  uprooted  still  we  see,|| 
And  as  the  God- built  city,  drown'd  in  fire, 
You  sing,  O  Homer,  on  your  sacred  lyre, 
Its  dismal  fate  we  pity,  it  is  true. 
But  its  immortal  fame  we  envy  too."1[ 

And  can  we  doubt  that  the  Anthologists 
refer  to  this  passage,  i,e.^  recognise  Homer 
as  the  author  of  an  ''  I  lias  Mikra,"  though 

*Ep.  Gr.  Frag.,  p.  46.  t  Ibid.,  p.  73. 

iJiStrabo,  i.  p.  47,  Polyaenus  Pref. 
§  Odyss.,  xxii.  230.  |]  Alph?eus  Mitylenaeus. 

il  Anthol.  Planud.,  iv.  304. 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer,    455 

certainly  not  that  of  Lesches,  Thestorides, 
Diodorus,  Simmias,  Stesichorus,  and  I  do 
not  know  how  many  more  ?  And  note 
further,  that  the  last  six  lines,  anyhow,  are 
undoubtedly  Homeric,  and  quoted  by 
Alexander  the  Great  as  such.* 

Unquestionably,  also,  the  various  scraps 
now  ranked  as  IncertcE  Sedis  Fi^agmenta 
belong  mosdy  to  the  lost  portions  of  the 
''  Kuklos,"  and  also  many  lines  in  the 
amusing  ''  Agon  "  of  Lesches. 

Lasdy,  the  **  Epigrams"  were  not  the 
impromptus  Herodotus  represents  them, 
but  snatches  of  song  jotted  hastily  down 
upon  our  poet's  tablets  as  he  tramped 
along.  Three  of  them,  Epigrams  ii.,  v.,  and 
xii.,  wear  the  air  of  quotations,  the  former 
from  the  ''  Amphiaraus,"  the  two  latter  from 
the  "  I  lias  Mikra."  Take  them  so,  they 
are  spirited  enough ;  otherwise  they  are 
most  flat  and  insipid,  and  the  third  abso- 
lutely unmeaning.  Combine  Epigram  ii. 
with  Epig.  Gr.  Frag.,  p.  71,  Frag.  3, 
and  we  have  some  idea  of  the  poem  in 
which  Homer  takes  quite  the  view  of 
Statins  and  ^schylus.  Amphiaraus  in 
the  Epigram   longs  to  take  wings  like  a 

*  Stobaeus,  ii.  p.  343. 


45^     The  Complete  Life  of  Homer, 

dove  away  from  the  tents  of  the  profane 
and  impious,  and  in  the  Fragment  he 
cries  : — 

"  The  just  are  meek  and  gentle  ;  but  the  wicked — 
The  unjust  to  man  and  impious  to  the  gods — 
Yon  dying  cannibal  shows  what  they  are." 

Seeing  in  a  prophetic  vision,  before  the 
earth  swallows  him  up  as  a  willing  sin- 
offering  for  his  people,  the  awful  doom  of 
Ugolinic  Tydeus  and  lightning-blasted 
Capaneus.  So,  at  least,  I  fill  up  the  Frag- 
ment : — "  tJttio/  \i  ys  Sixaio/." 

In  Epigram  v.  he  taunts  Thestorides  with 
some  lines  out  of  the  poem  he  has  stolen, 
and,  by  the  way,  the  known  fact  that  the 
"  Ilias  Mikra "  was  attributed  to  Thes- 
torides is  clear  proof  that  it  was  Homer  s. 
Only  six,  at  most,  of  the  Epigrams, — Epi- 
grams i.,  vi.,  xi.,  xiii.,  xiv.,andxv., — strike 
me  as  having  been  recited,  and  of  these 
only  Epigram  xiv.  was  really  an  im- 
promptu, and  worthless  as  all  impromptus 
are.  Herodotus,  by  representing  the 
matter  otherwise,  gives  his  narrative  a 
most  unfortunate  air  of  iiivraisembla^ice. 
Two  of  them, — Epigrams  iii.   and  xii., — 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer,    457 

were  attributed  to  others,  the  former  to 
Cleobulus,  the  latter  to  Sophocles  ;  but 
this  merely  means  that  those  poets  quoted 
them. 

Just  one  more  bit  of  Homeric  auto- 
biography. Is  not  the  following  an  un- 
mistakable portrait  of  his  poor  faithful 
Bucco  .'^ 

I 

"  And  him  you  love  so  follow'd,  lady  dear, 
With  his  belongings  hurrying  on  board, ' 
A  marshal  something  older  than  his  lord  : 
What  sort  of  man  he  was  I'll  tell  you  here. 


Round-shoulder'd,  swarthy,  with  shock  head  of 
crow, 

Upon  Ulysses'  errands  he  went  amain 

With  huge  splay  feet,  the  dearest  of  his  train, 

For  what  was  wanted  of  him  he  did  know."  * 

Poor  worn-out  old  Sancho  Panza!  there's 
a  fine  parting  testimonial  for  you,  let 
Tzetzes  gibe  as  he  will ! 

I  might  have  strengthened  my  argument 
for  the  extreme  antiquity  of  writing  from 
so  common  a  book  as  Whitaker  s  Almanac. 
For  if  Tchang,  king  of  Loyang,  China,  calcu- 

*  Odyss.,  xix.  244-248. 


458     The  Complete  Life  of  Homer, 

lated  the  exact  number  of  degrees,  minutes, 
and  seconds,  in  the  obHquity  of  the  ecliptic, 
as  Whitaker  tells  us  he  did,  nearly  a 
hundred  years  before  Homer,  he  could  not 
have  done  it  without  writing,  and  an  in- 
finite amount  of  writing,  too.  And,  indeed, 
Pliny  expressly  tells  us  that  the  Chaldeans 
wrote  their  observations  of  the  stars  on  flat 
tablets  of  baked  clay,  coctiles  lalerctdi.'^ 
By  the  way,  I  should  have  named  Pliny, 
on  page  235,  as  one  of  my  authorities  for 
Homer's  being  born  at  Smyrna;  for  of  that 
city  he  says  that  it  "rejoiced  in  the  river 
Meles,"  which  can  mean  nothing  else.  He 
also  tells  us  of  the  Salt  Pool,  where  once 
the  gardens  of  Tantalus  bloomed — a  school- 
boy's holiday  excursion  from  Smyrna,! — 
from  which  we  see  clearly  where  and  how 
Homer  picked  up  his  Tortures  of  Tan- 
talus. X 

The  statement  of  Solinus,  on  page  107, 
is  evidently  a  mere  translation  of  the  last 
three  lines  of  the  tombstone  on  page  121, 
when,  having  faded  to  etesi  diakosiois  .  .  . 
konta  geg  .   .   .   Homeros,  they  were  con- 


*  Pliny,  N.H.,  vii.  56. 
%  Od.,  xi.  582-592. 


t  Pliny,  N.H.,  v.  29. 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer.    459 

jecturally  filled  up  :  etesi  diakosiois  Theb- 
donie]  konta  geg[onen]  Homeros.  This, 
1  thmk,  renders  the  reasonincr  on  pao-es 
416  and  417  simply  irresistible!  The  faw 
enunciated  at  the  conclusion  of  Chapter  1 1 1 
IS,  mdeed,  of  the  most  paramount  import- 
ance m  deciphering  ancient  inscriptions, 
as  I  could  instance  past  all  dispute  did  only 
space  permit,  e.g,,  Roehl,  -  Sched^e  Epigra- 
phicae  p  ^  5,  epigraph  3,  concerning  a 
later  Tychicus  Smyrnaeus,  all  comes  out 
if  you  allow  only  just  thirty-three  letters 
per  line. 

In  addition  to  the  authority  of  Euripides 
and  Fliny  on  page  354,  backed  by  that  of 
Homer  and  Herodotus,  for  the  use  of 
tablets  in  writing,  we  have  elsewhere  the 
express  statement  of  Dionysius  Halicar- 
nasensis,  that  the  historical  records  of  Italy, 
from  the  primeval  times  when  the  Arca- 
dians introduced  the  recent  discovery  of 
letters,  were  preserved  in  writino-  on  the 
sacred  deltoi. 

A  study  of  Apollonius  Rhodius  has 
further  satisfied  me  not  only  that  the 
Hymns  to  Apollo  and  Artemis  were 
written  by  Homer,  but  that  they  were 
written  on  a  special  occasion.     The  voyage 


460     The  Complete  Life  of  Homer. 

to    Athens   via    Delos  was,   as    we   learn 
from  Horace,  considered  very  dangerous. 

"  Oh,  shun,  beloved  friend,  the  dangerous  seas 
That  rave  between  the  shining  Cycladees." 

And  the  Argonauts,*  bound  on  a  dan- 
gerous voyage  out,  are  very  civil  to  the 
goddess  of  the  tide-controlling  moon,  and 
sing  many  fine  hymns  to  Artemis  Neosoos, 
or  Soonautes,  when  the  sea  is  rough. 
Much  more,  then,  would  the  Poet  of  poets 
have  a  hymn  ready,  when  bound  on  a 
voyage  at  once  so  perilous  as  he,  indeed, 
alas  !  found  it,  and  through  seas  under  her 
especial  jurisdiction.  How  completely 
they  were  so  I  have  surely  already  proved 
ad  nauseam.  The  extreme  probability  of 
Homer's  writing  his  Hymn  to  Artemis  for. 
and  reciting  it  on,  this  voyage,  I  will  onl\ 
prove  by  two  arguments.  First,  turn  to 
the  nineteenth  section  of  Lesches's 
"  Agon,"t  and  read  how,  after  the  pseudo- 
Homer  had  recited  at  los  the  Hymn  to 
Apollo,  which  his  wife's  great  ancestor 
had  intended  to  recite  at  Delos,  the 
Delians  wrote  it  down  on  a  leucoma,  and 

*  Argon.,  i.  569-574. 

t  Westermann,  "  Lives,"  pp.  44,  45. 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer.     461 

consecrated  it  in  the  temple  oi  Artemis, 
Next  turn  to  Roehl's  **  Imagines  In- 
scriptionum  Graecarum,"  page  50,  Tituli 
Parii,  and  we  see  they  are  all  sacred  to 
Artemis.  And  the  second  and  the  third 
in  two  records,  in  four  elegiacs,  the  dedi- 
cation of  a  statue  to  the  virgin  goddess 
by  a  shipwrecked  couple  in  accordance 
with  a  vow,  and  in  grateful  recognition  of 
her  preservation  of  themselves  and  their 
family  and  substance. 

Athenaeus,  speaking  of  myrrhs,  throws 
some  additional  light  on  Homer's  first 
voyage  from  Smyrna  to  Egypt  with 
Mentes,  the  merchant.  ''Smyrna,"  he 
says  (that  is,  the  myrrh  of  Smyrna,  hence 
its  name),  *'  was  taken  to  Egypt,  and  from 
thence  shipped  over  to  Greece;"*  partly, 
I  fear,  from  a  fraudulent  motive  (just  as  I 
am  told  German  and  Dutch  goods  are 
taken  first  to  this  country),  Egyptian 
unguents  having  a  great  name,  and  partly 
to  avoid  the  notorious  perils  of  the^gean 
route.  And  Homer  was  doubtless  the 
person  whose  memory  he  extols  so  highly. 

Suetonius,  too,  confirms  my  view  that 
Aix  {goat)  was  originally  a  self-adopted 

*  Deipn.,  xv.  39. 


462     The  Complete  Life  0/  Homer. 

nickname.  '*  Scanty  hair,  none  atop,  the 
rest  of  him  shaggy,"  says  he,  in  his 
description  of  Caligula,  which  is  so  far, 
doubtless,  that  of  our  poet,  "so  much  as 
to  mention  the  word  goat  in  his  presence, 
was  accounted  a  capital  offence."* 

I  have  said  that  all  the  countless 
Homeric  tales  we  have  can  only  be  per- 
fectly reconciled  by  fixing  our  poet's  helikia 
at  twelve.  If  the  reader  still  questions 
the  date  thus  obtained,  he  will,  I  trust, 
doubt  no  longer  when  I  tell  him  that  the 
dates  of  Antilochus,  Eratosthenes,  Aris- 
toxenus,Iamblichus,  Lycon,  and  Porphyrius 
can  only  be  perfectly  reconciled  by  fixing 
Pythagoras's  helikia  at  the  same  age.  As 
Christ  was  called  at  twelve,  and  Samuel 
at  twelve,  so  Homer  was  called  at  twelve, 
and  Pythagoras  at  twelve.  Between  twelve 
and  thirteen,  in  the  precocious  East,  the 
human  bud  opens  to  the  dawn  of  physical 
puberty  in  the  vulgar  many,  and  of  spiritual 
puberty  in  the  sacred  few. 

Just  as  the  chemist  calls  his  wares 
odonto,  kalidor,  cutisora,  &c.,  and  as  the 
rnuse-inspired  grocer  calls  butter  marga- 
rine, sugar  saccharine,  and  tea  the  Seric 

*  Caligula,  iv.  50. 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer.    46 

leaf,  so  the  principal  article  in  his  cargo 
when  he  went  as  merchant's  clerk  to  Egypt, 
so  commonplace  was  it  naturally  enough 
in  his  eyes,  Homer  calls  not  myrrh,  but 
rosolia. 

Besides  the  letter-cup  of  Nestor  (pp, 
ZZ'^-ZZl)  that  the  comic  poet  Alexis  men- 
tions, the  tragic  poet  Achaeus  brings  upon 
the  stage  a  cup  with  Dionuso  embossed  on 
it ;  and  that  the  merry  god  had  drunk  out 
of  a  cup  of  which  it  was  an  exact  facsimile, 
he  and  all  his  audience  believed,  we  may 
be  sure,  most  unquestioningly. 

One  final  word  on  the  *'  Hymn  to  Ar- 
temis." It  was  unquestionably  a  Stesi- 
chorean  palinodia  offered  to  the  only  too 
justly  offended  goddess,  in  close  connexion 
at  once  with  the  Apaturia  that  he  had  just 
been  taking  part  in  (see  pp.  79,  80),  and 
with  his  contemplated  voyage.  That  in 
his  'Thineus"  Apollonius  depicts  Homer 
as  under  the  divine  displeasure,  I  am 
absolutely  certain. 

The  explanation  of  Eumaeuss  story  of 
the  daughter  of  Arybas,  on  p.  197,  is 
plainly  incomplete.  Further  reflection, 
however,  enables  me  here  to  conclude  it. 
Aristotle's  story   and    Homer's  are  plainly 


464     The  Complete  Life  of  Homer, 

the  same,  except  in  one  important  par- 
ticular, that  the  child  was  not  the  woman's 
own,  but  her  master's ;  that  the  child  was 
not  Homer,  but  a  changeling.  But  who 
was  this  changeling  ?  The  change  of  but 
one  letter  enables  us  to  read  the  Homeric 
cipher  here.  Just  as  by  changing  M  into 
R  we  get  Rugby  as  the  true  locale  of 
Dickens's  "  Mugby  Junction,"  and  by 
changing  ;/  into  g  we  get  Argeios,  the  true 
name  of  Homer's  literary  rival ;  so  by 
changing  E  into  C  we  get  Cumaeus  from 
Eumaius,  and  by  changing  /  into  /  we  get 
Clymene  from  Ctimene  (a  most  absurd  and 
impossible  name,  by  the  way),  and  the  riddle 
is  solved.  The  stolen  boy  (call  him  Or- 
menus,  so  named  from  his  grandfather)  is 
received  kindly  by  his  new  master  Onyres, 
who  adopts  him,  renames  him  Homer  after 
his  own  father  Homer  of  Smyrna,  and 
brings  him  up  with  his  own  little  daughter, 
Clymene  (Od.,  xv.  365).  Thus  ^umseus, 
as  far  as  this  story  goes ^  is  no  other  than 
Homerus  Cumaeus  (Homer  of  Cyme),  the 
adopted  brother  of  Clymene,  our  poet's 
grandmother.  And  see  how  admirably 
dates  all  chime  in.  Ephorus  calculates  that 
Homer  of  Cyme  was  born  1056,  and  if  we 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer.    465 

suppose    the  little  heir  of  Ctesius  Orme- 
nides  to  have  been  about  ten  when  he  was 
stolen,  in  the  year  of  the  Ionic  Apoecia, 
that  would  be  about  his  true  date.     And 
his  adopted  sister  Clymene,  presumably  a 
trifle  younger,  would  be  a  very  ^ood  acre 
to  be  the  mother  of  Kretheis,  born,  as  we 
know,  1033.      Is  not  all  this  simply  wonder- 
ful ?     And  in  the  face  of  it  will  any  critic 
presume   to  deny  that  the  poet  of  poets 
had  a  double,    nay,  treble,  share   of  the 
poet  s    never-failing   characteristic,—  irre- 
pressible self-communicativeness  ? 

Undoubtedly  Peisistratus  in  his  last  and 
worst  tyranny  found  literature  at  a  sadly 
low  ebb.  But  what  of  that .?  Four  cen 
tunes  lay  between  him  and  Homer,  half 
glimmering  starlight,  and  half  Egyptian 
darkness.  So  writing  may,  quite  possibly, 
have  been  scanty  and  backward  in  the 
sixth  century  b.c,  and  yet  plentiful  and 
torward  enough  in  the  tenth. 

The  following  is  a  much  more  satisfac- 
tory way  of  reconciling  Aristode's  date 
with  the  true  one  than  either  of  those 
already  given.  The  author  of  the  indis- 
putable statement  that  Apollodorus  found 
on     some    venerable    monumental     relic 

2   H 


466      The  Complete  Life  of  Houier. 

**  Homer  died  two  hundred  and  forty  years 
after  the  Trojan  War,"  took  the  com- 
mencement instead  of  the  conclusion  as 
the  true  date  thereof.  This  premised, 
supposed  age  at  death  is  the  sole  cause 
of  discrepancy,  thus  : — 


952 
+  91 

1043 


1 192 
—  240 

952 


952 
+  63 

1015 


1 192 

-  240 


952 


Age  at  death  91  necessarily  gives   1043 
as  date  of  birth,   and  63  gives  1015,  and 


vice  versa. 


FINIS. 


printed   liy  tht  hansaku  i'ublishiwg  dnion,  1  im., 
<:ki:at  queen   street,   London. 


CHAPTER  XII. 


NOTES. 


Note  I  on  Page  5. 
Of  Theseus,  the  founder  of  Smyrna  at  the  time  of  the 

birth  of  Homer, 
This  was  not  the  Theseus,  but  the  youngest  son  of 
Hippasus,*  third  in  descent  from  Eumelus,  the 
Kretheid.  Here  our  author's  statement  is  confirmed 
by  that  of  the  anthologist  where,  speaking  of  the  pier 
and  embankment  at  Smyrna,  he  declares  that  the 
architect  had  "  surpassed  Theseus  and  Pelops  in  his 
buildings."! 

Note  2  on  Pages  8  and  9. 
Whence  Homer  derived  his  name. 
Homer  derived  his  name,  not  from  an  incident  that 
happened  some  forty  years  after  his  birth,  but  from 


•  Mueller,  F.  H.  G.,  vol.  i.  p.  36-79. 
t  Anthol.,  ix.  670. 

2    I 


468         The  Complete  Life  of  Homer, 

one  that  happened  some  three  generations  before.    He 
derived   his    name   from    his    mother's   grandfather, 
Homer  of  Smyrna,  who  was  so  named  because  his 
father  was  given  to  the  Colophonians  as  a  hostage* 
about  the  time  of  his  birth ;  a  pretty  reason  this  for  a 
fond   wife  and   mother    naming  her  babe,    and  as 
probable    as    the    other    is    improbable.      Just    so 
Autodorus,   the   historian  of  Cyme,   was   so   named 
because  he  was  born  in  his  parents'  old  age,  when 
they  had  long  ceased  to  pray  for  a  child.     And  just  so 
the  author    of    the   Parian    Chronicle   was    named 
Astyanax  because  his  father  was  elected  mayor   of 
Paros  at  the  time  of  his  birth  ;  but  his  parents  could 
no  more  have  baptized  him  Euryanax  or  Polyanax 
then  than  they  could  have  baptized   him  Ahab   or 
Judas  now.     Such  names  as  Ichabod  and  Benjamin 
in  Scripture,  and  Odysseus  in  Homer  himself,t  tell  us 
how  common  a  practice  it  was  in  the  East  (common 
as   natural)   to    name   children   after  some    striking 
event  at  or  immediately  preceding  their  birth,  but 
only  to  modify  their  names  from  anything  that  might 
happen   afterwards.     Thus   Abram,   Sarai,   Saul,   no 
more   changed   their  names   than   Homer  did,   but 
Abram  was  modified  into  Abraham,  Sarai  into  Sarah, 
and  Saul  into  Paul,  just  as  Hdmerus  was  into  Homerus. 

Note  3  on  Page  40. 
The  proofs  of  his  blindness. 
Besides  the  almost  unanimous  testimony  and  belief 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer,         469 

of  all  antiquity,  we  learn  it  most  unmistakably  from 
our  poet  himself:  (i)  from  his  Thamyris  in  the  Iliad  ; 
(2)  from  his  Demodocus  in  the  Odyssey;  (3)  from  the 
blind  old  man— beyond  all  reasonable  question 
Homer  himself— in  the  hymn  to  Apollo;  (4)  from 
Epigram  IV.,  lines  15-17,  where  he  distinctly  specifies 
his  blindness  : 

"  Nor  will  I  any  longer  stay 
In  thy  holy  streets,  oh  Cyme  ; 
But  to  an  alien  people  go, 
Blind  as  I  am,  oh  Cyme,  oh, 
Since  thus  you  do  deny  me." 

(5)  Epigram  VII.  distinctly  implies  blindness,  smce 
otherwise  it  is  the  rankest  silliness  ;  (6)  lastly  from 
his  broad  hint  in  the  Odyssey : 

"  Even  a  blind  inan  might  full  easy  know 
How  much  the  farthest  did  Ulysses  throw,"* 

meaning,  of  course,  that  the  writer  of  the  Odyssey 

the  discerner  of  the  surpassing  merit  of  the  hero  there- 
of—was a  blind  man. 

Note  4  on  Page  64. 
Homer  and  the  dogs  of  Glaucus. 
This  adventure  evidently  made  a  strong   impres- 
sion upon  our  poet.     Hence  Priam  sighs  as  he  con- 
templates the  coming  catastrophe  of  Troy  : 

•*Me,  last  of  all,  the  dogs  that  I  have  fed 
With  dainties  from  my  board,  will  fiercely  rend, 

And  my  raw  flesh  devour  when  I  am  dead. 
And  lap  my  blood,   and  my  vast  empire  end."t 


*  Suidas,  art.  Homer. 
t  Odyss.,  xix.  405-409. 


*  Odyss.,  viii.  195,  196. 
t  II.,  xxiii.  66. 

2    I    2 


470         The  Complete  Life  of  Homer, 

A  grand  passage,  but  one  which  perhaps  we  owe  to 
Glaucus's  curs,  and  our  poet's  tatters.  It  is,  perhaps, 
worth  while  also  to  observe  that  of  the  only  two  ante- 
cedent poets  that  Homer  names  throughout  his  works, 
Thamyris  and  Linus,  in  naming  the  one  (the  poet 
whom  the  offended  Muses  punished  with  the  loss  of 
eyes)  he  was  certainly  thinking  of  his  own  blindness  ; 
and  in  naming  the  other  (the  poet  that,  like  Thasus 
and  Actaeon,  the  dogs  tore  in  pieces)  he  was  quite 
possibly  thinking  of  his  own  narrow  escape  from  the 
same  dreadful  fate. 


Note  5  on  Page  99. 
Homer  s  poverty  not  only  fiotorious^  but  proverbial. 
Not  only  have  we  a  well-known  couplet  in  which 
it  is  referred  to  as  such,  but  it  even  passed  into  a 
gambler's  bye-word  ;  and  the  unlucky  throw,  Chios, 
was  so  called  in  reference  to  him  (probably  with  some 
side  allusion  to  los,  one  : — the  constant  confusion  be- 
tween Chios  and  los  the  reader  has  seen  in  more  than 
one  passage  of  this  work),  just  as  the  lucky  throw 
(hexeites)  was  called  Cous,  in  reference  to  Simonides, 
of  Cos,  perhaps  the  only  Greek  bard  that  ever  accu- 
mulated capital. 


Note  6  on  Page  108. 

Homer's  age  at  time  of  death. 

The  doubt  quite    possibly  entertained  by  Aristotle 
that   Homer's  tombstone  was   not  set   up   for   some 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer,         47 1 

eight  or  nine  years  after  -  the  nymphs  had  anointed 
him  with  nectar,  and  buried  him  under  a  rock  by  the 
sea  shore,"*  need  not  surprise  us  when  we  reflect  that 
precisely  the  same  thing  happened  to  Shakespeare. 
1  he  monument  in  his  honour  was  erected  seven  years 
after  his  private  interment.f 

Three  things  in  this  very  difficult  point  are  certain  : 
(I)  Aristotle  believed,  on  the  testimony  of  the 
record  at  los  (whether  on  our  poet's  tomb,  as  I  have 
conjectured,  or  elsewhere,  no  matter),  that  the  tomb 
was  erected  m  Homer's  honour  240  years  after  the 
rrojan  War  ;  and  consequently  allowing,  as  in  the  case 
of  Shakespeare,  about  lo  years  between  interment 
and  tombstone,  and  the  poet  dying  at  90,  according, 
I  presume,  to  the  native  tradition,  he  must  have  been 
born  about  1044  b.c. 

(2)  Apollodorus,  unfortunately  reading  gegone  in- 
stead of  gegraphe,  believed  on  the  very  same  testi- 
mony,  that  Homer  was  born  240  years  after  the 
Trojan  war,  thus  hopelessly  confusing  the  true  with 
the  pseudo  Homer. 

(3)  Solinus,  long  after  the  original  inscription  had 
perished,  found  another  based  upon  it,  and  exactly 
coinciding  with  the  account  of  Aristotle,  which,  of 
course,  the  lans  all  eagerly  caught  at,  making  out 
Homer,  as  it  did,  at  any  rate,  tonceived  at  los,  if  not 


•  Anthol. 

t  Ulrici,    "Shakespeare's   Dramatic  Art,"    Book    H 
chap.  v.  ' 


472         The  Complete  Life  of  Homer, 

actually  brought  forth  there.      Homer  died  at  los, 
953  (T»7)-     B^t  the  v  having   been   slightly   rubbed 
away,  he  unfortunately  read^ty,/>.,  9x3,  B.C.  Unques- 
tionably then  the  orthodox  date  of  inscription  was  953, 
and  of  death  anywhere  you  please  between  953  and 
943   B.C.       Consequently    the    divergency    between 
Aristotle's  date  and  the  true  date  is  simply  the  differ- 
ence between  his  age  at  death  according  to  Aristotle, 
and  his  true  age  according  to   Herodotus, //«j  the 
number  of  years  which  Aristotle  erroneously  imagines 
to  have  elapsed  between  his  death  and  the  erection 
of  the    tombstone    and  the  vainglorious  inscription 
upon   it,  as   improbably  ascribed  to  him  as  was  that 
on  Shakespeare's  tombstone  to  Shakespeare.  Reading 
as  I  do  kalupse^  not  kalupteij  I  believe  with  Apollo- 
dorus  that  the  date  of  death  according  to  the  tomb- 
stone was  943,  not  953.     But  we  are  not  bound  to 
accept  this  as  the  exact  date.     Homer  the  Younger 
came  to  los  from  60  to  70  years  afterwards,  and  all 
that  the  oldest  inhabitant  could  possibly  tell  him  was 
that  the  sacred  stranger  came  to  los  and  died  there 
when  he  was  a  mere  lad.     Consequently  the  pseudo 
Homer  set  the  date  down  in  the  roundest  of  round 
numbers,  as  two  hundred  and  forty  years  after  the  era 
of  eras,  he  being  totally  unable  to  arrive  at  anything 
approaching  to  exactitude.     The  true   Homer  died 
two  generations  of  men  before  the  arrival  at   los  of 
the  pseudo  Homer.     Of  this  we  may  feel  absolutely 
certain.     So  much  the  oldest   inhabitant  could  safely 
say.     He  could  safely  say  that  his  grandfather  was 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer,        473 

about  the  same  age  then  as  he  himself  was  now,  and  so 
much  the  husband  of  our  poet's  great-grand-daughter 
might  have  guessed  of  himself.  In  a  word  he  was  proba- 
bly  about  67  when  he  died.  The  facts  before  us  render 
It  highly  improbable  that  he  should  have  been  either 
much  older  or  younger. 

This  I  believe  to  be  the  vel  ipsissima  veritudo.  The 
indulgent  reader  must  kindly  pardon  the  various 
floundenngs  and  flummerings  and  flutterings  and 
fumbhngs  after  it  that  I  have  made,  in  the  course  of 
this  work,  m  the  troubled  water  of  conjecture,  before 
at  last  catching  the  pretty  butterfly  on  the  terra firma 
of  certainty. 

Note  7  on  page  151. 
Why  Eumaus  curses  the  whole  race  of  Helen." 
He  does  so  because  the  Penthelids  were  not  de- 
scended from  Helen,  or  her  yet  more  accursed  daughter 
Hermione,  who  drove  their  ancestor  into  exile,  and 
made  his  father's  house  a  hell  in  revenge  for  his 
strange  and  touching  fidelity  to  his  poor  mis-begotten 
offsprmg.     Hence  the  hatred  of  the  Penthelids  to  the 
race  of  Helen,  and  hence  Eumaeus's  curse ;  and  all 
the  more  because  one  of  Tyndarus's  three  vile  lecherous 
daughters    had    brought    the  hitherto  undreamt  of 
conummation  of  adulterous  leipandria  to  the  very 
confines  of  Ithaca.    And  Homer's  entire  treatment  of 
the  relations  between  Atreusand  Thyestes,  both  ahke 

*  Odyss.,  xiv.  68. 


474         ^^^  Complete  Life  of  Homer. 

ancestors  of  the  Penthelid  princes,  and  also  those  be- 
tween Orestes,  Agamemnon,  and  Clytemnestra  may  all 
be  traced  to  the  same  source — our  poet's  heartfelt 
loyalty  to  the  princely  founders  of  his  native  -^olis. 

Note  8  on  page  173. 

Of  Homer's  Wife, 
Of  our  poet's  wife,  Eurydice,  we  hear  not  one  word 
after  his  death.  We  know  from  the  Odyssey*  that 
she  survived  him,  and  that  is  all.  It  would  seem  that 
her  friends  wished  her  to  marry  better.t  And  as  she 
brought  him  some  little  moneyl  which  he  dissipated, 
and  was  much  better  born  than  he  (being  legitimately 
bom  from  the  legitimate  Kretheids,  whilst  he  was 
illegitimately  born  from  the  illegitimate,  and  her 
stemma  had  no  bar  sinister  whilst  his  had  three), §  and 
had  but  a  poor  taste  in  poetry,  1|  and  was  hardly  as 
wise  as  she  was  kind  and  beautiful,^  it  is  probable 
that  Homer  and  she  had  their  fair  share  of  the  bitters 
of  married  life.  Else  why  did  he  leave  her,  as  he 
must  have  known  at  his  age,  for  ever  ?  He  left  her  in 
love  and  peace  it  is  true,  but  still  he  did  leave  her. 

Note  9  on  page  186. 
Of  Ulysses^  Homer's  double. 

That  the  mythical  ill-usage  of  Ulysses  at  Ithaca  is 
taken  from  the  real  ill-usage  of  our  poet  at  Chios,  I 


*  Odyss.,  xxiii.  247-287. 
+  Odyss.,  XV.  16-18. 
X  See  page  140, 11.  9-19. 


§  See  Stemma. 

II  Odyss.,  i.  336-358. 

if  See  Odyss.  {Passim). 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer.        475 

have  already  indicated.  And  that  the  picture  of 
Ulysses' personal  qualities,  of  which  he  could  not 
possibly  have  known  anything,  is  based  upon  his  own, 
is  still  more  obvious.  The  description  of  Ulysses  as 
speaking  like 

**  Some  mute  inglorious  idiot  passion  fixt."* 
IS  doubtless  that  of  his  own  earnest  but  ungraceful 
delivery.  So  Shakespeare  and  Schiller  and  Sopho- 
cles were  but  poor  reciters.  So  Moses  and  Paul  were 
not  eloquent  men  of  fiery  words,  but  slow  of  speech  and 
tongue.  Ulysses  is  spoken  of  in  the  Iliad,  as  short 
but  strongly  built,t  and  in  the  Odyssey  he  is  taunted 
as  a  fat,  lazy,  gluttonous  pig  {molobros.)\  And  in 
Lycophron,  Cassandra  spitefully  taunts  him  with  being 
a  dwarf  {nanos).%  Polyphemus  also  speaks  of  him  as 
a  little  man,  and  so  does  Homer  himself.  ||  And 
Ulysses  too  says : — 

"  For  indeed  there  is  such  among  men-folk. 
As  a  feeble  body  hath  had, 
But  God  crowneth  his  spirit  with  beauty, 
And  they  that  behold  him  are  glad." 

All  this  corresponds  with  the  little  that  we  learn  of 
Homer,  either  from  himself  or  his  biographer.  In  one 
variation  of  the  last  line  of  Epigram  I.  he  tells  us  that 
he  was  a  little  man,  and  the  whole  story  upon  which 
Epigram  XII.  is  based  shows  unmistakably  that,  like 


II.,  ii.  216-223. 

I  Odyss    xvii   2i9,xviii.  268.  Cf  Lycophr  Alex.,  777-8. 
^  Lycophr.  Alex.,  1544.        ..  /^^     ^  •  ^  ,   . /// « 


t  II.,  iii.  192-194. 
".  Cf  Lycophr.  i 
Odyss.,  ix.  513-516. 


47^         The  Complete  Life  of  Homer. 

Ulysses's,  his  soul  was  a  jewel  of  great  price  in  a  homely 
casket.  How  thoroughly  indeed  the  ancient  Greeks 
identified  our  poet  with  his  hero  appears  from  this  one 
amongst  a  thousand  proofs.  We  have  Homer's  own 
authority  for  deriving  his  hero's  name  from  the  verb 
odussofnai,  I  am  wroth  ;  but  the  later  Greeks  derived  it 
absurdly  enough  from  hodos,  a  way,  and  eimij  I  go,  alleg- 
ing that  Ulysses  was  prematurely  brought  forth  on  a 
journey,  obviously  merely  to  identify  him  with  our  poet, 
who  really  was  brought  forth  under  very  similar  circum- 
stances. So  in  Lycophron,  Alexandra  calls  Ulysses  a 
crow,  simply  because  the  school  of  critics  Lycophron 
belonged  to  believed  our  poet  to  have  lived  to  90.*  To 
conclude  :  Neither  Homer  nor  anyone  else  could 
have  known  how  long  Ulysses  wandered,  and  how 
many  years  his  wife  repelled  the  suitors ;  still  less  his 
personal  appearance,  method  of  delivery,  age  at  death 
&c.,  it  is  only  reasonable,  therefore,  in  all  such 
matters,  to  believe  that  he  is  drawn  from  Homer,  and 
not  Homer  from  him. 


Note  10  on  page  189. 

Homer  no  *  laudator  teinporis  acti^  as  Nestor  was. 

All  the  heroes  that  fought  at  Troy  were  superior  to 
their  fathers,  save  only  where  those  fathers  were  the 
sons  of  Gods,  and  so  justified  the  angry  boast  of 
Sthenelus : 


Lycophron.  Alex.,  784. 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer. 

"Our  sires  'tis  plain  we  far  excell, 
1^  or  we  took  Thebes  'fore  which  they  fell." 


477 


But  m  the  Trojan  War  the  race  of  heroes  is  destroyed 
in  accordance  with  the  profound  design  of  offended 
Heaven,  and  their  sons  are  all  mere  mortals  and  far 
inferior  to  them.  But  subsequent  poets  from  Hesiod 
to  Horace,  when  they  talk  of  the  continuous  de- 
generacy  of  the  human  race,  are  not  at  all  in  touch 
with  Homer,  however  they  may  think  they  are. 

Note  II  on  page  194. 

The  Date  of  Homer. 

The  following  are  further  proofs  in  addition  to  those 

already  given,  that  Homer  lived  long  after  the  Trojan 

\Var.      The  animated  passage  already  given  on  page 

178 

'*  Accurst  be  he,  and  banisht  long  and  far, 
1  hat  loves  in  kindred  states  to  kindle  war," 

very  probably,  and  the  dialogue  between  Jupiter  and 
Juno  at  the  commencement  of  the  Fourth  Book  of 
Iiiad,t  most  certainly,  refers  to  the  desolating 
character  of  the  terrible  Civil  War,  so  euphemisti- 
cally called  the  Return  of  the  Heracleids,  which, 
coming  as  it  did  after  the  Trojan  War,  and  being 
indeed  a  direct  consequence  of  it,  was  followed 
by  such  a  midnight  of  comatose  utter  exhaustion  that 


*  11.,  iv.  405-409. 
t  II.,  iv.  39-67. 


478         The  Complete  Life  of  Homer. 

it  took  European  Greece  several  centuries  to  rally  from. 
Lastly  that  significant  passage : — 

Maeon,  the  son  of  Haemon,  like  the  immortal  Blest : 
Him,   and  him  only,  Tydeus  on  his  homeward  path  let 

go. 

The  rest  he  slew,  but  him,  I  say,  he  spared  with  pious 

breast 
Obeying  the  awsome  prodigies,   Heav'n's  will   that  did 
foreshow  * 

points  unmistakably  to  the  strangely  adventurous 
career  of  the  House  of  Mneon  from  their  banishment 
from  Thebes  to  the  birth  of  Homer. 


Note  II  on  page  156. 

Homer's  Stemma. 
Every  member  of  his  stemma,  so  far  as  the  nature 
of  his  poem  permitted  it — that  is  from  Krethon  to  Deu- 
calion, and  from  Chloris  to  Antiopeand  Tantalus,  on  his 
mother's  side,  and  from  lasus  to  Melampus  on  the 
side  of  his  father  Dmasagoras — receive  conspicuous 
mentions ;  and  the  fortunes  of  themselves  and  their 
families  form  the  subject  of  very  nearly  all  the  bye- 
play  throughout  both  the  Iliad  and  the  Odyssey ;  only 
something  more  is  given  to  the  beloved  family  that 
founded  his  native  ^olis.  The  bye-play  that  we  can- 
not connect  either  with  our  poet's  family  or  personal 
history,  or  with  his  two  heroes,  is  utterly  insignificant— 
is  as  scanty  as  it  well  can  be.  Our  poet  does  not  even 
mention  the  greatest  of  his  predecessors — Orpheus. 


•  II.,  iv.  394. 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer, 


479 


Note  12  on  pages  234  and  236. 
Authorities  in  favour  of  Smyrna, 
Long  as  is  the  catalogue  of  authors  I  have  given  in 
these  pages,    that   directly  or   by   clear   implication 
admit  that  Homer  was  born  at  Smyrna,   it  is  still  by 
no  means  complete.      To  it  we  must  add   Hippias 
Plmy  (else   what  can  the  phrase  -Smyrna  rejoicing 
m  the  river  Meles  "  mean  ?),  and  Timomachus.*     And 
though    an    anonymous    Greek    writer,    presumably 
Diodorus  the  Scholiast,  claims  him  as  an  Athenian 
(accordmg  to  Aristarchus  and  Dionysius  the  Thracian)  • 
if  Moschus,  writing  in  Egypt  of  his  lamented  Bion 
(I.e.  Maeon),  a  lineal  descendant  in  all  probability  of 
our  poet,  claims  him  as  the  dear  deceased's   fellow 
citizen  by  birth,  we  may  be  sure  his  tutor  Aristarchus 
and  the  whole  school  of  Alexandria  thought  so  too 
/.^.believed  him  a  Smyrniote,  though  doubtless  At/iems 
oriendorum  vel  oriendissimus. 

Besides  all  this  there  are  the  multitude  of  poets 
Hipponax,  Anacreon,  and  the  Anthologists,  that  plainlv 
imply  their  belief  that  Smyrna  was  the  place  where 
he  was  born,  though  they  do  not  precisely  say  so 
And  if  Pausanias  had  not  the  courage  of  his  opinions  * 
that  was  only  too  natural.  He  durst  not  say  what  he 
knew  of  the  Maeonian  bard,  the  Lydian  flute  player 
lest  he  should  be  ungenerously  taunted  with  his 
Lydian  birth. 


•  Westermann,  "Lives,"  p.  276. 


480         The  Complete  Life  of  Homer. 

Note  13  on  page  255. 
Homer's  birth  at  Smyrna  proved  by  the  map  and  register. 

Now  in  the  first  place  fancy  him  amongst  the  ruins 
of  the  ancient  capital  of  Maeonia,  and  by  the  Salt 
Pool,  where  the  gorgeous  gardens  of  Tantalus  once 
bloomed,  storing  up  the  materials  for  those  two 
striking  myths,  with  which  every  classical  reader  is 
familiar.* 

Read  II.,  xx.  382-392  and  cf.  Lycoph.  Alexandr. 
135 1 -1 36 1  and  the  various  scholia  which  tell  us  that 
the  lake  of  Gyges  was  the  same  as  Ascania  in  Lydia, 
on  the  confines  of  the  mountains  of  Aryma. 


And  again  :  — 

*'  The  bold  Maeonians  from  Tmolus  led 
Mesthles  and  Antiphus,  a  lovely  nair. 
The  sons  of  grey  Talasmenes,  and  bred 
Beside  the  lake  of  Gyges.  "t 

Between  Mount  Mimas  on  the  west  and  Mount 
Tmolus  and  the  Gygean  lake  on  the  east,  and  between 
the  river  Hermus  on  the  north  and  the  river  Cayster 
on  the  south,  lay  the  Holy  Land  of  our  poet's 
nativity,  the  Maeonia  from  which  he  derived  his  name. 
Else  why  does  he  alone  of  poets  name  the  geese  and 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer.         48 1 

swans  of  Cayster*  when  those  of  Meander  were  so 
much  more  celebrated?     Or  why  does  he  alone  of 
poets  call   Apollo  the    God     of    M^onia,t      when 
Apollo  was  only    the  God  of  M^onia  because  his 
poet  of  poets  was  born  there  ? 

But  now  let  us  pass  these  sacred  boundaries,  all  so 
amply  celebrated  in  our  poet's  song,  and  cry  out  with 
Clazomenian  Hipponax  to  the  eloquent  grandson 
oj^  Atlas,   the    cunning    parent    of    ^' the    wryneckt 

"To  Smyrna  with  what  speed  you  may 

Hurry,  scurry,  on  your  way  ; 

Through  the  Lydians  on  to  us, 
Along  the  tomb  of  Attalus  ; 
And  Gyges'  barrow  by  the  lake. 
That  Its  name  from  him  did  take  ; 
And  the  rune  that  still  appears 
On  the  pillar,  worn  with  years, 
Of  the  King  with  Phrygian  cap. 
That  disguised  his  ears'  mishap. 
Belly  to  the  setting  ball, 
Candaules  whom  the  Mc-cons  call. 
Dog  choking,  thievish  Mercuree  ; 
Come  hither,  and  make  sport  with  me. ''J 

Here  we  have  the  story  of  the  Homeric  epitaph  on 
the  long-eared  king  fully  confirmed,  and  the  whole 
thing  Homer  all  over,  as  if  the  poet,  being  in  his 
native  place,  spoke  as  it  were  in  his  name. 


*  Pliny,  N.H.,  vii.  56.    Also  Od.,  xi.  582-592. 
t  II.  xvi.,  485. 


•  II.  ii,  461. 

t  Hymn  ii.,  II.  2. 

X  Hipponax,  I.,  Fr.  15  and  i. 


482         The  Complete  Life  of  Homer, 

And  now  we  are  at  Smyrna,  the  Golden  City, 
the  holy  city,  as  one  of  the  Anthologists  calls  it.* 
And  here  is  Hyle,  of  which  so  much  has  been  said 
already,  and  Bessaf  (so  named  from  Bessain  Locris),| 
a  village  hard  by,  of  which  the  Anthologist  says  : 

**  Having  enriched  the  parcht  soil  with  water 
Of  the  ancient  nymph  Bessa,  King  Tmolus's  daughter." 

Surely  this  Bessa  is  the  Smyrnean  Arethusa,ofwhom 
the  Schohast  tells  us§  ;  and  the  beacon  the  work  of 
the  Asclepiads;||    and  the    Healtheries,1  which  may 
possibly  have  led  Homer  to  return  to  Smyrna,  that  El 
Dorado,  as  we  learn,  on  other  grounds,  of  the  faculty,  if 
possible  to  find  a  cure  for  his  eye-disease,  contracted 
presumably  in  Egypt,  and  which  may  still  more  prob- 
ably have  led  his  descendant  Creophylus  the  Younger  to 
write  his  "  ^chalia  "  :  the  Asclepiads,  as  we  know, 
having   headed  the  contingent  to  Troy  therefrom.** 
And  the  harbour,   and  Orpheus's  Head,  of  which  aLo 
we  have  heard  so  much,  and  Crow's  Rock, 

"  The  rock  of  Corax,  by  Arethusa's  well," 

and  surf-lashed  Naulochus,  and  Ship-Hill,  and  the  beds 
of  the  nymphs,  and  Aryma. 


*  Anthol.,  Appendix,  130. 
t  Anthoi.,  ix.  678. 

X  11.,  ii.  532. 

§  Schol.  Odys.,  xiii.  597. 


II  Anthol.,  ix.  675. 

II  Anth.jix.  642-4.  Roehl. 


•* 


II.,  ii.  730. 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer.         483 

Map  of  M^eonia  and  Smyrniotis 

(illustrative  of  the  foregoing  remarks ;  with  the  places 

in  them  mentioned  in  Homer). 


Cyme.  Magnetes. 

SMYRNIOTIS. 


R.  Hermus. 

R.  Hyllus. 
Crow's  Rock.         Mt.  Sipylus. 

'Arethusae  Fons. R.  Achelous. 

Hyle. 
Neion.  SMYRNA. 

R.  Meles. 


L.  Gyges. 
Ascania. 


Tomb 

of 
Midas. 


Ship-Hiil. 


Aryma  Mt. 

Tmolus. 


Claros. 


R.  Cayster. 


Of  course  Smyrniotis  is,  for  convenience  sake, 
drawn  on  a  much  larger  scale  than  the  rest  of 
Mgeonia. 

Here  we  see,  withm  a  radius  of  about  a  couple  of 
miles,  fourteen  proper  names  of  places  mentioned  in 
our  poet,  and  twenty  within  a  radius  of  seven  or  eight 
miles.  And  yet  we  are  told  he  was  not  a  Smyrniote.  But 
of  the  other  six  contending  cities,  Colophon  is  not  even 
named,  and  within  a  two  or  three  mile  radius  of  none 
of  the  other  five  do  we  find  so  much  as  one  other  name 

2    K 


484        The  Complete  Life  of  Homer. 

mentioned  by  him.  Troy,  it  is  true,  and  Pherae,  the 
native  seat  of  his  maternal  ancestors,  and  Ithaca,  and 
the  Sacred  Route  from  thence  to  Dodona  are  of  course 
highly  favoured.  But  within  a  two  or  three  mile,  nay, 
a  seven  or  eight  mile  radius,  even  of  them  will 
you  find  anything  like  an  equal  number  of 
Homeric  proper  names  of  places  ?  Only  men- 
tion any  one  city  in  Bekker*s  by  no  means  extrava- 
gantly long  topographical  index  anything  like  equally 
favoured  by  our  poet,  and  I  will  admit  him,  if 
you  please,  to  have  been  a  Hottentot  or  a  Dutch- 
man. 

Lastly  how  well  do  all  the  names  we  come  across 
in  the  epigraphical  works  of  Boeck,  Roehl,  and  others 
harmonise  with  the  view  that  Homer  was  born  at 
Smyrna.  Take  for  example  C.T.  3155  !  Here  we 
have  the  temple  to  Diana  at  Ephesus  rebuilt,  and 
amongst  the  wealthy  contributors,  one  Me[la]nippus, 
and  one  a  son  of  Dorion,  both  Homeric  family  names. 
So  in  Roehl's  Schedse  Epigraphicae*  we  have  a  younger 
Tychicus  Smyrneus.  And  of  the  very  few  women  of  the 
name  of  Smyrna  (that  is  Smyrniots  of  the  Smyrniots)  we 
find  one  a  priestess  of  Argos  (just  what  compatriots  of 
our  poet  would  most  wish  to  be),  and  one  the  wife  of 
Maeonius.f  So  in  St.  Paul  we  find  a  third  Tychicus, 
his  amanuensis  to  the  Ephesians,  and  how  identical  the 


♦  Sched.  EpigT.  p.  5.  Epigr.  3. 
t  Boeck,  Corp.  Inscr.  iioo. 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer.        485 

Ephesians  are  to  the  Smyrniots,  save  that  they  lack  the 
Phnconid  element,  we  all  know.  And  what  is  Mene- 
lek  the  Abyssinian,  but  a  direct  descendant  of  Dmasa- 
goras,  alias  Menelachus  or  Melemachus,  Homer's 
mysterious  father? 


Note  14,  on  page  278. 
The  Apotheosis  of  Horner. 
The  Apotheosis  of  Homer  took  place  in  the  reign 
of  Ptolemy  Philometor,  164  b.c,  and  in  the   literary 
censorship  of  the  celebrated  Aristarchus,  the  tutor  of  one 
of  Ptolemy's  sons  and  of  his  predecessor,  Evergetes  H ; 
and  the  execution  of  the  well-known  sculpture  called 
the  Apotheosis  of  Homer  was  no  doubt  principally 
due  to  his  all-powerful  court  influence.     And  in  it  we 
have  the  figures  of  the  Iliad  and  the  Odyssey  kneel- 
ing beside  our  poet's  seat,  and  the  frogs  and  mice 
creeping  in  and  out,  like  the  dancing  lady's  feet  in 
Suckling's  charming  poem,  under  his  footstool.  After 
this,    can  we  doubt    that    the    Batrachomyomachia 
was  deemed  indisputably  Homer's,  from  the  earliest 
dawn  of  letters  until  now  ?   From  Lesches  to  Herodo- 
tus, and  from  Herodotus  to  Suidas,  and  from  Suidas 
to  Tzetzes,  who  all  three  acknowledged  it ;  and  from 
the  palmiest  days  of  criticism— the  days  of  Aristarchus 
and  Zenodotus— when  it  figured   in  the  Apotheosis, 
to   the   introduction   of   printing,   of  which   it   was, 
strange  to  say,  the  very  earliest  offspring ;  and  from 
the  days   of  Dacier,  Pope,  and  Pamell,  to  those  of 

2    K    2 


486         The  Complete  Life  of  Homer. 

Bohn's  Classical  Library,  who  have,  one  and  all, 
deemed  it  worthy  of  translation,  it  was  never  disputed 
till  the  commencement  of  the  present  century,  and 
then  only  on  the  most  trivial  grounds  possible. 

Note  15,  on  Chapter  X. 

The  inscriptions  attest  the  immense  antiquity  of  writing. 

We  all  know  that  the  Greeks  visited  Samothrace 

on  their  way  to  Troy,  and  we  find  there  the  following 

inscription,  containing  the  names  of  three  of  them, 

AGAMEMNON   TALTHYBIUS    EPE[IUS]* 


Note  16  on  pages  431-438. 

Hermogenes^    the  Editor  of  Herodotus' s   '^  Life  of 

Homer:' 

That  Hermogenes  was  the  editor  has,  I  think, 
been  more  than  sufficiently  proved.  But  now  arises 
the  question — who  was  Hermogenes?  He  was  a 
physician  of  Smyrna,  author  of  '*  Smyrna,"  in  two 
books;  ^' The  Wisdom  of  Homer"  in  one;  *'The 
Country  of  Homer  "  in  one  ;  beside  seventy  works  on 
professional  subjects,  one  for  each  year  of  his  life,  as 
we  read  on  his  epitaph,  **  Hermogenes,  the  Son  of 
Charidemus,  wrote  a  book  on  the  art  of  healing  for 
every  year  of  his  life."t   Also,  Charidemus,  his  father, 


•  Roehl.  Imag.,  Insc.  xvii.,  31. 
t  Boeck  Corp.  Inscr.  3393. 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer.        487 

being  the  son  of  Bion,  i.e.,  Maeon,*  Hermogenes 
was  presumably  a  descendant  of  our  poet  through 
Homer  the  Younger,  the  more  so  as  Charidemus 
(incorrectly  written  Chariphemus),  the  founder  of 
Cyme,  figures  very  conspicuously  in  the  Stemma  of 
the  latter.  This,  of  course,  would  be  an  additional 
incentive  to  him  to  write  about  Smyrna  and  Homer, 
and  to  edit  the  Life  of  Lives,  as  I  believe  he  did. 
Lastly,  Smyrna  was  just  now  the  literary  centre  of 
Asia,  and  had  been  so  for  three  generations,  as  the 
following  stemma  will  show  : — 

Nicetes  (tutor  of 
Scopelinus  (tutor  of 
Herodes  Atticus  (coeval 

with  Polemon,  Hermogenes,  Galen,  Aristeides,  and 
Theon).  Eight  distinguished  men,  all  of  one  city, 
except  Galen,  who  only  studied  there !  Could  any- 
thing be  more  probable  than  that  such  a  galaxy  of 
talent  should  have  vindicated  the  honour  of  their  city 
against  the  absurd  misrepresentations  of  the  pseudo- 
Lesches?  And  when  Smyrna  was  at  its  zenith  in 
mathematics,  criticism,  science,  and  philosophy,  was 
this  a  time,  and  was  Smyrna  the  place,  for  so  vile  and 
impious  a  forgery  ?  And  was  Hermogenes  the  man  for 
it  ?  Can  any  reader  think  it  probable  that  the  writer 
of  as  many  as  seventy  scientific  works,  besides  three 
other  works  to  which  he  devoted  his  leisure  hours, 


*  Boeck,  Corp.  Inscr.  331 1. 


488         The  Complete  Life  of  Homer. 

should  have  been  guilty  of  forging  the  life  of  his 
great  ancestor — that  the  most  pious  of  men  should 
have  been  guilty  of  putting  other  men's  bones  into 
the  coffin  of  the  Venerable  One? 


i 


CHAPTER  XIII. 


MORE    ABOUT   THE    FRAGMENTS. 

A  SEARCHING  analysis  of  the  Agon  of  Lesches 
has  so  much  enlarged  my  knowledge  of  the  precious 
Fragments  of  our  poet,  that  Chapter  XII.  (on  his 
writings)  will  have  to  be  very  considerably  enlarged 
in  all  subsequent  editions  of  this  work.  I  print  here 
the  additions  that  will  appear  in  a  second,  for  the 
benefit  of  the  purchasers  of  the  first  edition. 

The  Agon  is  a  little  poem  of  about  100  lines, 
with  which  it  is  highly  probable  that  Lesches  won 
the  prize  from  Callinus. 

There  is  a  large  Prologue  and  Epilogue  in  it,  in 
prose,  by  a  worthless  author,  in  the  time  of  Adrian, 
to  whom  the  poem  itself  is  commonly,  but  most 
mistakenly,  attributed.  Some  of  the  lines  are,  of 
course,  from  Hesiod,  and  some  connecting  lines  are 

489 


490         The  Complete  Life  of  Homer. 


also,  of  course,  by  Lesches ;   but    the    bulk  of  this 
very  interesting  poem  is  genuine  Homeric   gold ;   a 
little  of  it  from  the  other   poems,    but    the    greater 
part  of  it  from  the    Ilias    Mikra,    possibly  as  much 
as  five-and-forty  lines.     And  yet  Lesches,  the  reputed 
author  of  the  Ilias  Mikra,   assigns  them  to  Homer. 
How  is  this  ?    There    would   be   no   point    in   the 
thing,  if  the  lines  were  all  out  of  the    Ilias    Mikra 
of  Lesches.     We  know  for  certain,  that  some  thirty- 
five    lines,    or    about    one-third,    of  the  poem   are 
from   either  Homer  or  Hesiod,  and  it  is  unreason- 
able   in    the     extreme     to     suppose    that   Lesches 
falsely  represents  these  too  to  be  Homer's.    How  is  it, 
then,  that  we  have  so   many    lines    from    the    Ilias 
Mikra?     Simply  because  Lesches  did  with  Homer's 
Ilias  Mikra,  just  as  Stasinus  did  with  his  Cypria — 
based  his  work  upon  the  fragments    still    remaining 
from  that  glorious    '*  feast  of  reason  "  ;   and    this    is 
his  highly  ingenious  way  of  advertising  himself  and 
his  poem. 

It  is  a  final  proof  that  Homer  wrote  the  Ilias 
Mikra,  that  Thestorides  wrote  it.  He  did  write  it  in 
the  Wolfian  sense  ;  he  got  Homer  to  write  it  for  him, 
and  then  bolted  with  it.  But  besides  the  Agon,  every 
one  of  the  ten  lines,  or  fragments  of  lines,  that  are 
classed  as  incertcR  sedis  fragmenta^  have  all  the 
appearance  of  being  from  the  Ilias  Mikra.  Their 
genuineness  has  never  been  questioned.  And  if  not 
fragments  quite  arbitrarily  lopped  off  the  greater  Iliad 
by  Aristarchus  and  others,  of  which  there  is  not  the 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer,        49 1 

smallest  sign  or  trace,  much  less  proof  or  evidence, 
they  must  be  from  the  less. 

With  the  help  of  these  precious  relics  of  antiquity, 
I  shall  now  give  a  fuller  account  than  I  have  done  of 
such  poems  as  are  quoted  in  it. 

I.— THE  APES. 

**  Alcides,  with  his  arrows  having  slain 
The  giant  brood  that  the  Phlegrean  plain 
Had  long  infested,  did  from's  neck  unstrap 
His  bow  and  arrow  for  a  noonday  nap." 

Lesches,  II.  22-23. 

The  Apes  that  he  gives  such  a  bad  character 
to  in  the  fragment  preserved  by  Suidas,  I  presume, 
finding  him  asleep,  stole  them,  with  the  result  re- 
corded by  Pindar,  see  page  273. 

The  poem  is  unquestionably  as  harmless  as 
harmless  can  be,  but  I  hardly  know  what  would 
be  said  to  a  private  tutor  in  the  present  day  who 
should  entertain  his  pupils  with  a  comic  poem, 
the  humour  of  which  turns,  exactly  like  that  of  the 
Dragon  of  Wantley,  entirely  upon  a  portion  of  the 
human  anatomy  that,  in  these  nice  modern  times,  is 
certainly  never  mentioned  in  drawing  rooms. 


2. -THE  RIDE  OF  AMPHIARAUS. 

"  For  man  on  earth  the  happiest  fate 
Is  never  to  be  born  at  all. 
And  the  next  happiest  doth  befall 
Him  that  first  passes  Hades'  gate." 

Lesches,  11.  3,  4. 


492         The  Complete  Life  of  Homer, 

This  harmonises  very  well  with  the  fragments  of 
the  Amphiaraus  that  I  have  discussed  elsewhere. 

The  remainder  of  the  Homeric  lines  in  the  poem, 
except  one  bit  from  the  Iliad  and  one  from  the 
Odyssey,  are  all  from  the  Ilias  Mikra. 

One  passage  is  plainly  travestied  from  the  contest 
between  Ajax  and  Ulysses  ; 

This  man  is  of  a  war-like  sire, 

And  an  unwarlike  spouse ; 
For  to  all  women  war's  a  dire 

Task  Nature  disallows. 

The  very  passage,  obviously,  that  Aristophanes  also 
quizzes. 

Another  passage : 

**  Upon  the  burnt  out  ashes,  dinner  done, 
They  gather'd  the  white  bones  of  Jove's  dead  son, 
Hign-souled  and  god-like  Lycian  Sarpedon" 

is  evidently  a  parallel   passage  to   that  in  the  Iliad, 
containing  the  funeral  honours  paid  to  Sarpedon.* 
A  second  passage  : 

But  when  her  maiden  crown,  by  marriage, 

Was  laid  in  childbed  low, 
Diana,  wroth  at  her  miscarriage, 

Smote  her  with  silver  bow 

Lesches,  11.  28-29. 


II.,  xvi.  453-457- 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer,        493 

is  as  evidently  a  parallel  passage  to  that  in  the 
Iliad  where  Nestor  tells  of  his  victory  over  the  Arca- 
dians.*    And  a  third  passage  : 

•'  Then  to  Colchis  they  came,  and  ^Cetes  they  flee 
For  unjust,  and  to  strangers  unkindly  was  he."t 

is  a  parallel  to  the  Argonautic  passage  to  Odyssey,  xii.  11. 
69-72.  One  passage,  and  but  one  in  the  Ilias  Mikra,  and 
one  and  but  one  in  the  greater  poem,  where  the  Arcadian 
war  is  spoken  of;  and  one  and  but  one  in  both,  where 
the  Argonautic  expedition  is,  looks  like  what  I  have 
observed  elsewhere  (and  the  funeral  honours  of  Sar- 
pedon in  both  look  more  like  it  still),  that  the  one  poem 
was  the  basis  of  the  other.  Hence  the  ancients  quoted 
continually  from  the  Ilias  Mikra  believing  that  they 
were  quoting  variations  of  the  Iliad,  and  that  the  Ihas 
Mikra  was  by  Lesches,  as  most  of  it  may  have  been, 
but  not  that  little  that  repeatedly  quoted  for  its  ex- 
cellence has  thus  defied  the  ravages  of  time. 

But  by  far  the  greater  part  of  the  scanty  remains  of 
the  Ilias  Mikra  of  Homer  are  from  the  noble  con- 
clusion which  I  will  here  present  for  the  admiration  of 
the  reader  in  as  perfect  a  state  as  I  can  manage  to 
stick  the  several  fragments  together. 

It  was  the  middle  of  the  silent  night, 
And  Cynthia's  orb  'dark  thro'  excess  of  bright.'! 
Mid  the  bright  starry  world  in  yonder  blue. 
With  virgin  face  did  its  due  course  pursue.§ 


*  II.  xvi.  453,  457.  t  Lesches,  11.  41-42 

X  Tzetzes  on  Lycophr.  §  Van  Gent  Epist.  Crit.Pind.,p.  7. 


494         2^^'^  Complete  Life  of  Homer. 

On  thy  plain,  Simois,  we,  sitting  down,* 
Kept  watch,  all  eyes  fix't  on  the  sacred  town.t 
When  word  came  to  the  armyt  '*  Troy  is  ta  en. 
Its  gates  stand  open,  and  its  guards  are  slain. 
Now  hasten  from  the  ships,  upon  yoW^^'^V!.      ^'.^ 
The  swords  and  spears  affrightmg  all  beholders.  § 
Oh  jocund  was  that  word  unto  us  all 
As  mom  in  spring  to  cattle  in  the  stall.U 
Or  to  the  mower  the  declining  sun. 
In  autumn  when  his  weary  toil  is  done.f 
Then  with  glad  haste  the  chosen  youth  did  land. 
Dragging  out  from  the  surge  with  stalwart  hand 
The  sea  worn  craft,  upon  the  Trojan  strand. 
Oh,  dreadful  was  the  fray  when  we  Pour  d  in. 
But  round  king  Priam  loudest  was  the  din, 
Who,  wildly  tilting  with  age-palsied  hand. 
Fell  at  the  altar,  neath  the  dripping  brand 
Of  savage  Pyrrhus,tt  who,  his  helpless  prey 
Mangled  with  hideous  stabs,  and  tore  away 
His  soul  out  of  his  body.    There  he  lay, 
His  body  all  one  gaping  wound,  the  ground 
Bedabbled  with  his  blood  him  all  around-Jt 
Such  was  the  end,  unburied,  undeplored, 
But  not  unsung  of  Troy's  once  mighty  lord.§§ 
Then  on  the  flesh  of  oxen  did  they  feast, 
And  necks  of  horses  from  the  car  released  ; 
For  they  were  weary  of  the  deadly  fray 
Which  they  had  mingled  in  since  dawn  of  day.IHI 
But  the  libations  made  and  quaffed  the  wine 
Upon  the  well  built  ships  was  their  design. 
Upon  their  homeward  way  to  cross  the  brine, 
And  as  Atreides  raised  the  goblet,  he 
Prayed  none  of  them  might  perish  in  the  sea. 


♦  Lesches,  I.  35-    t  Barnes.     %  JEschm  contr.  Timarch. 
§  Lesches.  11.  37,  38.     II  Hippocr.  de  articulis,  u.  p.  784- 
%  Dion,  Halic  de  Hom.  poesi.     Plut.  Morals,  p.  377.  e. 
♦♦  Lesches,  11.  39,  40.    Aristot.  Polit.  21,  p.  1457^    I3sq- 
tt  Virg.  Mn.,  ii.  and  Juv.  Sat.,  x. 
XX  Aristot.  ap.  Schol.  Ven.  ad.  II.  xxiv.  44. 
§§  Virg.  JEn.,  ii.  .        ,    ^  o 

nil  Lesches,  11.  17  and  18.    Aristoph  Pac,  1282-3. 


The  Complete  Life  of  Homer.        495 

And  thus  he  spake  upon  that  glorious  day, 

"  Come  eat  and  drink,  and  drive  dull  care  away  ; 

And  oh  !  may  none  of  you  war-broken  men, 

To  his  dear  native  land  come  home  again, 

By  shipwreck  spoil'd  of  all  so  hardly  won, 

But  may  ye  reach  home  safely,  every  one."  * 

Thus  all  day  long  they  feasted  without  cost, 

But  Agamemnon,  king  of  men,  their  host.f 

But  when  their  fill  of  wine  and  bread  and  meat 

They  had  all  taken,  each  one  left  his  seat 

And  donn'd  his  armour,  and  with  wild  uproar 

Outside  the  walls  like  summer  flies  they  pour.t 

But  soon  inside  the  walls  a  different  scene 

Did  they  enact,  led  by  the  wicked  queen. § 

And  the  new  King^  of  Asia    "  What,"  cried  he, 

*'  The  power  of  life  and  death  now  rests  with  me.|| 

O'er  all  the  land,  and  shall  we  spare  their  lives. 

That  have  so  lon^  divorced  us  from  our  wives  ? 

Each  torch  was  lit,  in  each  hand  lifted  high, 

And  mixt  with  smoke  the  fire  illumed  the  sky  ; 

And  all  the  horrors  of  a  plundered  town 

Were  perpetrated  'ere  the  sun  went  down. 

Torn  from  the  nurse's  breast  the  babe  doth  fall,f 

Held  by  the  foot,  and  flung  down  off  the  wall; 

And  to  the  ships,  to  shudder  in  his  bed. 

Tear-blind  Andromache  grim  Pvrrhus  led.** 

"  Unshorn  Apollo  laid  Achilles  low 

With  the  wing'd  arrows  of  his  silver  bow.ft 

And  Ajax  found  a  quicker  depth  of  sadness 

Mid  slaughter'd  sheep  self-slaughtered  in  his  madness. 

In  vain  for  all  their  valorous  deeds  they  died, 

'Tis  wise  Ulysses,  and  he  only,"  cried 


*  Lesches,  11.  43-49-  t  Lesches,  30,  31. 

X  Aristoph.  Pac,  1286-7.    §  Dryden's  Alexander's  Feast. 
"Thais  led  the  way 

To  light  him  to  his  prey, 

And,  like  another  Helen,  fired  another  Troy." 
II  Aristot.  Polit.,  iii.  14  p.,  1285a. 
^  Crates  (Bergh.  Anth.  Lyr.  p.  129.) 
**  Tzetz.  on  Lycophr,  1263.  Cf.  Paus.  x  25-9. 
tt  Bachm  Anecd.,  vol.  ii.,  p.  287. 


496         The  Complete  Life  of  Homer, 


The  King  of  Men,  ♦•  that  lit  yon  tow'ring  flame. 
And  earn'd  himself  and  us  immortal  fame  : 
His  myriad  wiles,  by  Pallas  taught,  have  taen 
The  God-built  city  they  assailed  m  vam.'  ♦ 

A  noble  passage  quoted  by  one  ancient  author  after 
another,!  and  alluded  to  by  Homer  himself  in  the 
poem  it  so  neatly  introduces— the  Odysseian  sequel 
to  the  Iliadean  "  Kuklos."t  And  compare  with  it 
the  language  of  the  Epigrammatists:  — 

*♦  Thy  plaint  we  still  hear,  O  Andromache  ; 
Troy  from  its  base  uprooted  still  we  see,§ 
And  as  the  God-built  city,  drowned  in  fire. 
You  sing,  O  Homer,  on  your  sacred  lyre, 
Its  dismal  fate  we  pity,  it  is  true. 
But  its  immortal  fame  we  envy  too.  '|| 

And  can  we  doubt  that  the  Anthologists  refer  to  this 
passage,  i.e.,  recognise  Homer  as  the  author  of  a, 
though  perhaps  not  the,  Ilias  Mikra?  And  Philostratus 
and  others  hold  very  similar  language.  What  a  mass 
of  testimony  is  all  this.  And  is  it  possible  that  a  few 
fragments  of  so  insignificant  a  writer  as  Lesches 
should  have  been  so  diligently  studied  and  so  in- 
cessantly quoted  by  all  antiquity  ? 


»  Ep.  Gr.  Fr.,  p.  73-     Stob.  Flon. 

t  Odyss.,  xxii.  230. 

X   Strabo,  i.  p.  47-  Polyaenus  Pref. 

§  Alphseus  Mitylenaeus. 

il  Anthol.  Planud.,  iv.  304. 


NOTICES  OF  THE  PRESS. 

••  Blind  Melesigenea  ought  to  be  satisfied  now.  You  have  the  whole 
thing,  place  and  date  of  birth,  ancestry,  boyhood,  travels,  adventnres, 
schoolmastering,  occupation  as  wandering  minstrel,  last  sickness  and 
death,  and  the  inscription  on  his  tombstone,  *  with  copious  dates,'  and 
all  in  a  little  volume  that  will  go  in  a  coat  pocket."— Sfcofowan,  October 
14th,  1889. 

•*  For  2,842  years  had  Homer  been  waiting  for  a  biographer.  He  had 
beencriticised.'fiommented  upon,  edited,  translated ;  his  head  sculptured, 
his  existence  denied ;  cities  had  contended  for  the  honour  of  being  his 
birthplace ;  he  had  been  by  turns  a  divine  poet,  a  strolling  ballad- 
monger,  and  a  solar  myth ;  but  it  is  only  now  that  his  complete  life  has 
been  written,  and  it  is  to  the  honour  of  English  scholarship  that  it  is 
this  country  which  has  produced  the  complete  biographer.  Well  can  we 
imagine  the  feelings  of  baffled  ra^e  with  which  this  monument  of 
patient  industry  and  critical  acumen  will  be  received  in  Germany,  and 
the  execrations  which  disappointed  pedants  will  hurl  on  Mr.  P.  A. 
White.  B.A.,  who,  in  one  little  volume,  has  set  at  rest  for  ever  the  con- 
troversies of  centuries.  This  life  of  lives  contains  full  particulars  of 
the  birth,  parentage  and  ancestry  for  ten  generations  of  the  poet ;  the 
various  incidents  of  his  boyhood  and  manhood ;  his  exile,  voyages,  and 
adventures  by  sea  and  land ;  his  death  and  the  inscription  on  his  tomb- 
stone ;  together  with  an  elaborate  critical  discussion  of  his  works  ;  in 
short,  a  complete  dossier  of  the  man  and  an  exhaustive  bibliography  of 
his  writings.  It  might  be  expected  that  a  book  of  such  profound  re- 
search would  be  caviare  to  the  general,  though  of  the  deepest  interest 
to  the  student ;  but  it  is  not  so.  Mr.  P.  A.  White,  B.A.,  wears  his  weight 
of  learning  lightly  as  a  flower.  Not  only  does  he  embellish  the  book  with 
appropriate  passages  from  his  own  poems,  but  he  condescends  to  the 
vernacular ;  and  allusions  to  current  topics  cannot  fail  to  attract  the 
attention  of  the  frivolous  and  the  unscholarly.  His  denunciation  of  those 
'  ill-natured  busybodies  who  are  ever  ready  with  their  miserable  gossip  to 
smooth  the  upward  path  with  the  treacherous  ice  of  their  sour-eyed 
charity '  is  extremely  forcible  ;  and  in  the  whole  range  of  English 
literature,  it  would  be  hard  to  find  a  passage  which  can  compare  with 
the  following  animadversion  on  the  Chians,  for  their  neglect  of  the 
poet  while  he  lived  and  the  honour  they  paid  him  when  dead  : — 'The 
finest  soul  God  ever  breathed  forth  they  had,  with  their  cold-blooded 
heartleasness,  driven  from  Its  frail  tenement  of  clay ;  and  now  of  that 


496         The  Complete  Life  of  Homer, 


The  King  of  Men,  "that  lit  yon  tow'nng  flame, 
And  earn'd  himself  and  us  immortal  fame  : 
His  myriad  wiles,  by  Pallas  taueht,  have  ta'en 
The  God-built  city  they  assailed  m  vam.'  * 

A  noble  passage  quoted  by  one  ancient  author  after 
another,!  and  alluded  to  by  Homer  himself  in  the 
poem  it  so  neatly  introduces— the  Odysseian  sequel 
to  the  Iliadean  "  Kuklos."t  And  compare  with  it 
the  language  of  the  Epigrammatists:  — 

*♦  Thy  plaint  we  still  hear,  O  Andromache  ; 
Troy  from  its  base  uprooted  still  we  see,§ 
And  as  the  God-built  city,  drowned  m  fire, 
You  sing,  O  Homer,  on  your  sacred  lyre, 
Its  dismal  fate  we  pity,  it  is  true, 
But  its  immortal  fame  we  envy  too.  H 

And  can  we  doubt  that  the  Anthologists  refer  to  this 
passage,  i.e.,  recognise  Homer  as  the  author  of  a, 
though  perhaps  not  the,  Ilias  Mikra?  And  Philostratus 
and  others  hold  very  similar  language.  What  a  mass 
of  testimony  is  all  this.  And  is  it  possible  that  a  few 
fragments  of  so  insignificant  a  writer  as  Lesches 
should  have  been  so  diligently  studied  and  so  in- 
cessantly quoted  by  all  antiquity  ? 


♦  Ep.  Gr.  Fr.,  p.  73-     Stob.  Flon. 

t  Odyss.,  xxii.  230. 

t   Strabo,  i.  p.  47.  Polyaenus  Pref. 

§  Alphseus  Mitylenaeus. 

il  Anthol.  Planud.,  iv.  304. 


NOTICES  OF  THE  PKESS. 

*•  Blind  Melefligenea  ought  to  be  satisfied  now.  You  have  the  whole 
thing,  place  and  date  of  birth,  ancestry,  boyhood,  travels,  adventures, 
schoolmasterlng,  occupation  as  wandering  minstrel,  last  sickness  and 
death,  and  the  inscription  on  his  tombstone,  *  with  copious  dates,'  and 
all  in  a  little  volume  that  will  go  in  a  coat  pocket."— &otema/i,  October 
14th,  1889. 

••  For  2.842  years  had  Homer  been  waiting  for  a  biographer.  He  had 
beencriticised,*commented  upon,  edited,  translated ;  his  head  sculptured, 
his  existence  denied  ;  cities  had  contended  for  the  honour  of  being  his 
birthplace ;  he  had  been  by  turns  a  divine  poet,  a  strolling  ballad- 
monger,  and  a  solar  myth ;  but  it  is  only  now  that  his  complete  life  has 
been  written,  and  it  is  to  the  honour  of  English  scholarship  that  it  is 
this  country  which  has  produced  the  complete  biographer.  Well  can  we 
imagine  the  feelings  of  baffled  ra»e  with  which  this  monument  of 
patient  industry  and  critical  acumen  will  be  received  in  Q-ermany,  and 
the  execrations  which  disappointed  pedants  will  hurl  on  Mr.  P.  A. 
White.  B.A.,  who,  in  one  little  volume,  has  set  at  rest  for  ever  the  con- 
troversies of  centuries.  This  life  of  lives  contains  full  particulars  of 
the  birth,  parentage  and  ancestry  for  ten  generations  of  the  poet ;  the 
various  incidents  of  his  boyhood  and  manhood;  his  exile,  voyages,  and 
adventures  by  sea  and  land ;  his  death  and  the  inscription  on  his  tomb- 
stone ;  together  with  an  elaborate  critical  discussion  of  his  works  ;  in 
short,  a  complete  dossier  of  the  man  and  an  exhaustive  bibliography  of 
his  writings.  It  might  be  expected  that  a  book  of  such  profound  re- 
search would  be  caviare  to  the  general,  though  of  the  deepest  interest 
to  the  student ;  but  it  is  not  so,  Mr.  P.  A.  White,  B.A.,  wears  his  weight 
of  learning  lightly  as  a  flower.  Not  only  does  he  embellish  the  book  with 
appropriate  passages  from  his  own  poems,  but  he  condescends  to  the 
vernacular ;  and  allusions  to  current  topics  cannot  fail  to  attract  the 
attention  of  the  frivolous  and  the  unscholarly.  His  denunciation  of  those 
'  ill-natured  busybodies  who  are  ever  ready  with  their  miserable  gossip  to 
smooth  the  upward  path  with  the  treacherous  ice  of  their  sour-eyed 
charity '  is  extremely  forcible  :  and  in  the  whole  range  of  English 
literature,  it  would  be  hard  to  find  a  passage  which  can  compare  with 
the  following  animadversion  on  the  Chians,  for  their  neglect  of  the 
poet  while  he  lived  and  the  honour  they  paid  him  when  dead  : — 'The 
finest  soul  God  ever  breathed  forth  they  had,  with  their  cold-blooded 
heartlessness,  driven  from  its  frail  tenement  of  clay  ;  and  now  of  that 


NOTICES  OP  THE  FREBB.— Continued. 

poor,  time-decayed,  wrong-and-sorrow-flawed,  death-broken  hovel  they 
would  make  a  temple.  .  .  .  Methinks  I  see  his  widow  beating  her 
breast  and  tearing  her  hair.  Methinks  I  see  his  two  daughters  crying, 
"  Oh,  father !  oh,  dear  father  !  why  have  we  not  even  thy  ashes  to 
mourn  over?"  What  can  be  more  pointed  than  this  description  of 
that  *  right  bad  egg,  Thestorides,'  or  of  the  '  one-eyed,  mauy-tongued 
scum  of  Asia  Minor' ;  or  happier  than  the  comparison  of  the  '  calm  of 
a  life '  to  the  placid  Thames  at  Mortlake?  "— St.  James's  Gazette,  Novem- 
ber 11th,  1889. 

"  To  evolve  order  out  of  chaos,  to  unearth  the  authentic  story  of 
Homer  the  Great  from  beneath  the  vast  pile  of  legendary  and  fabulous 
lore  accumulated  by  the  miscomprehensions  and  unwarrantable 
assertions  of  chroniclers,  new  and  old,  is  an  ambitious  undertaking;. 
Mr.  White  has  done  wonders  in  the  diflScult  and  delicate  process  of  the 
enumeration  and  verification  of  the  facts,  dim  with  the  dust  of  ages, 
from  which  he  constructs  his  complete  narrative  of  the  poet's  life." 
The  critic  here  points  to  a  defect,  which  he  goes  on  to  say  "  sadly  mars 
the  beauty  of  an  otherwise  almost  perfect  treatise,  an  argument  at 
once  elaborately  learned  and  lucidly  conclusive,  a  statement  well 
calculated  to  clear  up  and  consolidate  the  very  hazy  and  speculative 
ideas  most  people  have  on  the  origin,  the  execution,  and  the  true 
character  of  poems  so  marvellous  as  the  *  Iliad '  and  the  '  Odyssey.'  "— 
The  Whitehall  Heview,  November  30, 1889. 

"  This  work  has  been  exceedingly  well  spoken  of  in  the  critical  notices 
which  have  appeared  in  the  papers.  It  shows  very  wide  reading  and 
extensive  erudition  on  the  part  of  the  author,  and  gives,  in  very  brief 
space,  a  mass  of  information  not  accessible  to  ordinary  readers.  As  the 
world's  earliest  great  poet,  there  must  always  attach  to  him  great 
interest.  His  is  a  personality  about  which  not  very  much  is  known, 
but  what  is  known,  and  as  the  writer  hints  what  is  conjectured,  was 
well  worth  the  effort  to  bring  it  together.  It  is  written  in  a  popular 
style,  and  is  as  full  of  information  as  it  well  could  be."—  The  Wolverhamp- 
ton Chronicle,  March  12, 1890. 


FINIS. 


N.B. — Homers  pedigree  is  stated  incorrectly  ou  p.  i, 
//.  124-5,  a«(/ //.  12S-9.  His  correct  pedigree  is  ou  pp.  20^- 
208,  and  his  correct  age  cU  death  on  p.  466. 

ADDENDUM  i, /a^'v?  245,  after  line  10. — And  can  not  i^'C 
faticy  him  amongst  the  ruins  of  the  ancient  capitol  of  Aliconia^ 
and  by  the  Salt  Pool  'i^'Jiere  the gorgeozis  gardens  of  Tantalus  once 
bloomed — they  are  only  twelve  miles  from  Smyrna — storing  up 
the  mcUerials  for  those  tiuo  striking  myths  ivilh  -which  every 
classical  reader  is  familiar  ?  * 

ADDENDUM  2, /flot  323,  after  line  i^.— The  Chaldccans 
took  celestial  calculations  2234  n.c.  An  eclipse  of  the  sun  was 
recorded  2169  **'^-  Abraham  read  lectures  on  Astronomy  in 
^Sypl  1923  B.C.  The  Greeks  subdivided  the  heavens  into 
constellations  1500  ii.c.  The  Chaldocans  formed  astronomical 
tables  12^^  n.c.  Lastly,  Tchang^  king  of  Loyang,  China^  de- 
termined the  obliquity  of  the  ecliptic  as  23°  54'  2".  No^v^  was 
all  this  possible  without  writings  and  an  immense  amount  of 
writing  too  / 

ADDENDUM  3,  f^ge  H\,  after  line  iT.  — The  Arcadians, 
indeed ,  are  said  to  have  introduced  writing  into  Italy  not  long 
after  its  appearance  in  Greece  y\  and  to  have  kept  historical  i-ecords 
on  the  sacred  tablets  from  ages  the  most  remote,X 

ADDENDUM  ^— On  page  ^16,  line  10,  after  ''purse:'  This 
Scindapsus  seems  to  have  invented  the  four-stringed  lute,  and 
given  his  name  to  it y  from  whence  it  appears  yet  more  clearly  hoif 
superior  he  was  to  poor  Bucco,  — as  superior ,  indeed y  as  St.  Luke 
was  to  Tychicus  ;  and  also  how  many  generations  Homer  the 
Elder,  7uith  his  primeval  three-stringed  cithar,  must  haze  preceded 
Terpander  11.,  with  his  seven-stringed  lyn\ 

On  p.  84,  /.  22,  for  ''prophet'''  read  "poet*'  ;  and  on  p,  197, 
/.  2^,  for  "Smyrna  "  read  "  Cyme,"  and  strike  out  next  sentence. 


Pliny,  N.  !{.  V.  29.         t  Diojt.  Halic.,  I.  32,  §  4.        %  lb.,  L  73,  §  i. 


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